Starburst Magazine 073 (1984 08) (Marvel UK)

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COMPANY OF WOLVES

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Volume 7, Number 1
August 1984 issue

Editor:

Alan McKenzie

Assistant Editor:

Roger P.Birchall
Design:

Steve Cook
Production:

Tim Hampson
& Alison Gill
Colour:

Cheamworth Ltd
Typesetting:

Type Generation
Distribution:

Comag

Financial Controller:

Robert W. Sutherland
Advertising:

Sally Benson
Publisher:

Stan Lee

Writers this issue:

John Brosnan
Chris Charles
Tony Crawley
Phil Edwards
Leslie Ford
Barry Forshaw
Sally Gary
Richard Holliss
Alan Jones

Francesca Landau

Published monthly by Marvel Comics Ltd., 23 Redan
Place, London W2, England. All photographic mate-
rial is copyright © BBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, ITC, Col-
umbia, New Realm, Rank, Twentieth Century-Fox,
UIP, United Artists, Paramount, Warner Bros, Walt
Disney Productions, CIC, EMI, MGM, MCA-Universal
or Lucasfilm Ltd (unless otherwise stated) and
appears with their kind permission. All remaining
material is copyright © 1984 Marvel Comics Ltd., a
subsidiary of Cadence Industries. Starburst is a
tradename and trademark of Marvel Comics, Ltd.
While contributions are encouraged, the publishers
cannot be held responsible for unsolicited manu-
scripts and photos. All letters sent to Starburst will be
considered for publication.

Subscription Information: Annual subscriptions to
Starburst magazine can be obtained by sending a
cheque or postal order (send no cash) to the editorial
address for £ 12. 00 (overseas subscriptions are $24.00
US currency). Delivery is by First Class Postage In the
UK and by Air Speed for Overseas.

For display advertising contact Sally Benson at the
editorial address. Telephone: 01-221 1232. Printed in
the United Kingdom.

T his Christmas sees the arrival of the long awaited Steven Spielberg production
Gremlins. How the critics will react to the film after the recent reviews of Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom, remains to be seen. Actually it doesn't really
matter what the critics say, Spielberg nearly always cleans up at the box-office. Gone are
the days when vitriolic super-critics could make or break a career for a film director.
Never before has the phrase "sticks and stones etc, etc" been more true of Messrs
Spielberg and Lucas. But does that mean that we can let the wielders of the poison pens
get away with it? Certainly not!

What is most infuriating is that according to some critics, cinemagoers are morons,
incapable of judging for themselves whether a film is good or not. But they should
remember that it's the viewing public who are responsible for the success of films like
Raiders, Close Encounters and now Indiana Jones, not a bunch of freeloaders who
hardly ever put their hands in their pockets for a ticket at the box office, but instead,
natter endlessly at free press screenings, over bowls of salted peanuts and glasses of
thin white wine.

In Time Out magazine dated June 14-20th, Steven Spielberg and in particular, Indiana
Jones came under attack from Geoff Andrew in a two-page article entitled Soy's Own
Brat. Andrew is one of the best, he starts his deceptive piece of journalese by appearing
to admire Spielberg. He then turns sour in the third paragraph, by warning us that
Indiana Jones could be "A second instalment in what may turn out to be - heaven
forbid! - an interminable series of adventures of the hero of Raiders of the Lost Ark" . He
even admits to making observations at the first London preview and how the audience,
"loved it, surrendering happily to its expert manipulation of fear and release, hectic
pace and sense of wonder".

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of his attack is that he feels that Spielberg and
Lucas have become so caught up in the trappings of success, that they've forgotten
what their movie is actually saying. Well . . . what is it saying? Ah yes, that there's a black
magic cult in India ripping the still beating hearts out of its victims, subjecting hundreds
of children to mid-twentieth-century slavery and warning of the dangers of pilotless air
travel. What else can it say? It's not a tea-break in the Garden of the Finzi-Contini, and
it's surely not necessary to add sub-titles as an explanation, is it?

Another criticism levelled at the film concerns the "hackneyed conception of the new
film s heroine". Kate Capshaw is accused of being "wimpy," and an "hysterical
stereotype". Granted, she may not have had the spunky heroics of Karen Allen, but for
me that was a refreshing change, or are we to believe that all women on screen must be
tough in order to keep the "male dominated world of Steven Spielberg's feverishly
filmic imagination", in the right perspective?

By this point, Geoff Andrew is warming to his role as a self-appointed champion of
underprivileged minorities. "Whatever one may expect from a comic-adventure, the
tone is frankly racist". Good grief, the film is no more racist in its depiction of an Indian
Village in the Thirties than the similar scenes in Gandhi. Racial hatred is a nasty
component of human nature and by attempting to label the film forthe sake of a point
of view is, I think, rather petty and somewhat unnecessary.

But it s depressing to see how naive and shallow his (Spielberg) attitude is towards
what kids want and need. Of course they want excitement, but kick out the reactionary
comic-strip stereotypes". Okay, true, that is all you hear the kids saying outside the
Empire Leicester Square, as they leave the theatre clutching their sweets and souvenir
books, "Kick out the reactionary comic-strip stereotypes," they chorus,

E.T. is attacked because as Andrew states, it shows that Spielberg is a "man out of
touch with both the joys and unpleasantries of modern life". Thank goodness for that,
if it means that the reason people are going to the cinema is to escape from reality.
Cinemagoers have been doing that for decades and so it's not a trend that can be
blamed on Spielberg. Perhaps to the Time Out staff, a movie is only acceptable if it's 8
hours long, contains Hungarian sub-titles and is only available for viewing at the
National Film Theatre. I can't see that showing emotion in a film about a "grotesquely
distorted garden gnome" is any more debasing than shedding a few tears in the final
reel of Casablanca.

Criticising Spielberg as having watched too many movies without relating them to
real life, Andrew shows, as many of Spielberg's recent critics, a total lack of
understanding of what film means to the majority of cinemagoers. It is still a form of
entertainment. If film needs to engage with the moral realities of modern life now and
again, fair enough, there will be plenty of pictures around doing just that, but will they
keep the cinemas open? Film is a too powerful and valuable a medium to be wasted,
and without the Spielberg's of this world there may soon be no screens left to waste it
on.

Richard Holliss

2

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STARBURST LETTERS 4

Our readers write on the Indiana Jones censor
cuts, David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone and
obscure fantasy tv shows.

THINGS TO COME 6

Our globetrotting gatherer of good tiding
Tony Crawley logs in with another fantasy
bulletin.

PREVIEW: 2010 8

At last! The long-awaited sequel to one of the
most famous science fiction films of all.

TVZONE 14

Richard Holliss ’ regular monthly look at
fantasy in television.

FUTURE KILL 16

We interview Ron Moore, debuting film
director, about his low-budget action movie.

irs ONLY A MOVIE 18

John Brosnan casts his rheumy eye over
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom!

THE STAR TREK
INTERVIEWS 10

Starburst presents an informal chat with
George Takei, Walter Koenig and Mark
Leonard, Trekkers all.

PREVIEW: DUNE 12

The epic adaptation of Herbert’s classic Dune
novel is almost upon us -a miracle after the
nightmare times in Mexico City during
production.

VIDEO FILE 42

Barry Forshaw's monthly look at what's
happening in the uncharted waters of the
video business.

BOOK WORLD 4S

Chris Charles' consumer guide to what's new
in fantasy books.

STARBURSTDATA
BANK 46

Starburst's ever-popular Sally Gary conjures
up information on Lionel Atwill, composer
Brian Mayanda whole pile of other fantastic
trivia. So what do you want to know?

COMPANY OF
WOLVES 20

Starburst presents an early look at the magical
SPFX on a new British fantasy movie.

THE STAR TREK
INTERVIEWS 24

We talk to Deforest Kelley and William
Shatner about the making of Star T rek III.

BLIND DATE 30

The Greek film director Nico Mastorakis
explains how to make an international thriller
on a domestic budget.

ITALIAN FANTASY 2 34

The second part of Alan Jones ' directory to the
fantasy film output of the Italian movie
industry

FILM REVIEWS 40

Starburst reviews Supergirl, Romancing the
Stone ancf Star Trek III. Guess which comes off
third best

3

TEMPLEOFGLOOM

I have to confess that, when I left the
Leicester Square theatre after seeing
Indiana Jones and The Temple of
Doom, it was with mixed feelings and a
sense of disappointment.

The main problem, as I saw it, was
that this eagerly awaited sequel to
Raiders contained two different films
working against one another. A bad
George Lucas movie and a good
Steven Spielberg one.

With regard to the Lucas angle, from
the contrived spectacle of Return of the
Jedi\ast year, it became quite apparent
that the man's writing talents had well
and t ruly gone to seed. Were it not for
the technical wizardry employed in
that film and the comfortable charac-
terizations previously developed, it
would have been in the same class as
the miserable likes of Spacehunter.
Much the same can be said of Indiana
Jones. Where imagination, ingenuity
and wry humour once dwelt in Lucas'
writing now reside crassness, self-
indulgence and pointless excess, a
good deal of which is evidenced in the
Shanghai section of the film.

Consider, for example, the scene
where Indy and his pals jump out of the
aeroplane in a rubber dinghy, ski down
a mountain slope, drop from a huge
precipice and tumble through a suc-
cession of rapids. As directed by Spiel-
berg, it is an impressive, well-executed
sequence which commands attention,
but as a piece of writing it leaves a lot to
be desired. It is an event that would not
have been considered for Raiders, be-
cause that was a tightly-controlled film
which derived most of its thrills from
realistic and credible action scenes. I
found myself thinking that not even
Indy could survive such an extraordin-
ary telescoping of accidents, despite
ILM's concerted efforts to make me
believe otherwise. It actually reminded
me of that ugly moment in Moonraker
when Richard Kiel managed to survive
his skydiving escapade by landing on
top of a circus tent.

In fact, when I think about it, the
whole of the first half of the movie is
reminiscent of a Roger Moore Bond
film. Long, laboured comedy sequ-
ences punctuated by jokey action
scenes and a few oddly anachronistic
"serious" moments. Never have I seen
the "icky foreign food" gag repeated so
often in such a short space of time.

The formula approach was again
emphasised when Indy and Co attemp-
ted to gain entry to the Temple though
a chamber of creepy crawlies. The
philosophy here was clearly: The spid-
ers and snakes went down well in
Raiders, let's give them more of the
same.

Thereafter, thank goodness, the
movie began to improve with Spiel-
berg's talent for spectacle clearly exhi-
bited in the Temple scenes. Unfortu-
nately, it was also at this point that the
British Board of Film Censors chose to

Starbwrst

LEllERf

Send all your comments and criticisms to:

Starburst Letters, Starburst Magazine,

Marvel Comics L td., 23 Redan Place,

London W24SA, United Kingdom.

step in and with symbolic irony, cut the
heart out of the tremendously atmos-
pheric Kali ceremony. In accordance
with the new restrictions imposed by
the Video Recordings Bill, gone were
the vital scenes of a victim's consump-
tion by the lava.

'Too terrifying for children,"
claimed a BBFC spokesman. Strange
how they didn't make any fuss about
the demise of the Nazis in Raiders.
Evidently, the authorities felt that chil-
dren exposed to the uncut rites of Kali
will immediately run out and throw the
first passerby into the nearest volcanic
crater.

All this leads me to believe that it
would be better for all concerned if the
Spielberg/Lucas partnership were to
come to an end before a joint disaster
brings down the both of them.

Indy Ilf! I can't say I'm too enthu-
siastic.

Graham Kennedy,
Camberley,
Surrey.

CUT!

I have just heard that the British Board
of Film Censors (in all their wisdom!)
have cut great chunks out of Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom in
order to grant it a PG cert. This was
obviously done to allow all the kiddies
who loved Raiders of the Lost Ark to
see and love this one too. Being a
general film buff and not just an Indi-
ana Jones fanatic this annoys me
greatly as it no doubt diminishes the
effect of the film as a whole. If Spiel-
berg and Lucas thought that these
scenes weren't essential to the film
then they themselves would have cut
them out, and I know that I would much
rather see this film as the makers
intended it to be seen, and not as the
British censors want us to.

Imagine if the Censors did this with
every 1 5 or 1 8-rated film - what a state
we'd be in then!

Thanks for listening.

Neil Roberts,
Caerphilly,
S. Wales.

KINGOFTHEHEAP

Seldom does a film live up to the
expectations of the book but, in my
opinion, David Cronenberg's version
of Stephen King's The Dead Zone has
gone one better - it surpasses the
book.

Though it grieves me to say so. The
Dead Zone have never been my
favourite King novel. It lacked the
scope and imagination of his others,
most notably The Stand, nor did it
contain the shocks we are used to from
an author of King's calibre. In short.
The Dead Zone novel was only good
from a technical viewpoint, the juxta-
positioning of three story-lines and its
use of well rounded characterisation.

Cronenberg, by comparison, takes
the best of King adds a W touches of
his own (making Sarah part of Still-
son's election campaign) and creates a
far more lucid and entertaining plot.

People will no doubt criticise the
Canadian for betraying his roots and
leaving his, by now famous, gross-out
special effects but I for one welcome it.
It is nice to see that Cronenberg can
show restraint when he has to and
maybe this will mark an end to the
inane, self-indulgent ramblings that
marred Videodrome. The Dead Zone
maybe a little slow but the film is a far
superior piece of work.

Direction aside, the greatest triumph
of this particular oputing into King-
country must be its fine performances.
Christopher Walken's Johnny Smith is
the intelligent, unassuming everyman
his name suggests, shunning a world
that tries to use him and his new found
powers of second sight. It is easy to
identify with Smith and it can be no
accidentthat numerous times through-
out The Dead Zone we see him sepa-
rated from the outside world, caught
behind glass (the windows of cars and
of his own house). His final demise,
necessarily for the character, is not a
full blown explosion of special effects
but through the single shot of a pistol.

Brooke Adams and Herbert Lorn give
Walken admirable support as does
Martin Sheen (once a Kennedy look-
alike always a Kennedy look-alike)
whose Senator Stillson was a remark-
able blend of charismatic charm and
all-consuming fanaticism.

Stephen King novels have, up until
now, made notoriously bad movies.
With the advent of Carpenter's Christ-
ine and Cronenberg's The Dead Zone
let's hope this new trend for entertain-
ing adaptations will be a mark of things
to come.

Paul Butler,
Bisley,
Surrey.

VINTAGE TV

With the tv nostalgia boom still going
strong, I wonder how many Starburst
readers remember a series which has

stuck in my memory since I was a kid,
called The Adventures of Don Quick
It was one of the first series to be
produced by London Weekend Tele-
vision (probably some time around
1969-70), was shot on video and net-
worked on Saturday nights, and star-
red Ian Hendry as Don Quick with
Ronald Lacey as his sidekick Sam Cao-
panza. Basically a parody of the Don
Quixote legend set in Outer Space, it
suffered badly at the hands of the
critics and lasted just one season - I
remember it, however, as being quite
clever and amusing; maybe it was just
ahead of its time. The series included
such delights as a giant dog cocking its
leg against Don Quick's spaceship,
Anoushka Hempel as an exotic alien in
a string vest - and a very clever re-
working of the famous Quixote "tilting
at windmills" sequence (where Don
Quixote mistook a number of giant
windmills for monsters, and attacked
them). In this particular episode, the
inhabitants of a distant planet were
terrified of huge, windmill-like struc-
tures and asked Don Quick to destroy
them. Quick, however, explained that
they were only windmills and weren't
really dangerous at all. And in the final
shot, as Don Quick's spaceship blasted
off into space, the "windmills" slowly

began to advance towards the terror-
stricken population. . .'

Maybe Richard Holliss could do a TV
Zone article about the series? I'd parti-
cularly like to know who was responsi-
ble for the scripts and the title music.

Another early LWT series which is
long overdue for a repeat showing is
Tales of Unease, a filmed anthology
series of horror stories shot largely on
location. The only episode I can recall
in any detail told the story of a man
trapped inside a modern office block in
London, facing death at the hands of
the computer which controls the air-
conditioning, lifts, electricity and
doors. Again, the title music for the
series was very distinctive.

Shadows of Fear, an early video-
taped series from Thames, was
another anthology horror series which
I used to enjoy. The title sequence
consisted of a montage of bleak town-
scapes and truly haunting title music
punctuated by the persistent hum of
chattering voices. Apart from that, I
can't remember a thing about it -
except that the first episode starred
Sheila Hancock as a mother terrified by
her small son.

Fans of Brian Clemens may be in-
terested to know tha his ATV series

Thriller - the videotaped series which
dealt with horror, witchcraft, murder
and straightforward detective myster-
ies - has been turning up at various
times on different ITV channels under
the blanket title of Late Night Thriller.
Some regional announcers mistakenly
call them "films" or "TV movies", but
of course they're not. People who re-
member Laurie Johnson's theme
music (those jagged, jarring notes) and
the "fish-eye" lens effect of the open-
ing and end credits will be dis-
appointed as I was to find that the
original title sequences have been re-
moved and replaced with abysmally
, low-standard title sequences produced
in the United States - dull, muffled
music (very bad sound quality), blurry
film sequences (often creating a whole
new "prologue" for the story, showing
for example the hands and feet of a
murderer - but never showing the face
because the actor in the episode isn't
the same as in the title sequence); and
really amateurish graphics and chro-
ma-key effects. The end credit graphics
usually show a gaudy illustration (of
the sort shown on cheap American
paperbacks) showing different scenes
from the story. I can only assume that
the reason these episodes are being
shown without the original title sequ-
ences is because ITC (it's that company
again!) sold the series to the United
States and we're now seeing repeats as
they were presented for American au-
diences.

On the subject of ITC- 1 wrote to both
ITC in London and to Varese Sara-
bande Records in Hollywood, Cali-
fornia, enquiring about the possibility
of them getting together to produce a
commercial soundtrack from The Pris-
oner (I have since learned that a four-
track EP is available from Six Of One,
PO Box 61 , Cirencester). In due course I
received a very kind and helpful reply
from Varese Sarabande, explaining
that musicians' union fees would hin-
der the possibility of such a project but
that they'd keep it in mind. At the time
of writing I have yet to receive a reply
from ITC, which seems fairly typical.

Graham Williams,
Mayhill,
Swansea.

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feasted on a veritable mascon of
movies. (Yeah, I've been reading
James Michener's Space, what you
been doin'?) To use more of his NASA
slanguage, Cannes '84 was veritably
copacetic. Sure it rained a lot. For me, it
rained movies, 64 in 14 days. . . and
bags of news. Like. . . Jennifer Beales,
Ms Flashdance herself, is The Bride (of
Frankenstein, who else?) in Sting's
new movie, with a fellow named Clan-
cy Brown as The Monster. As they're
shooting here in France, and I've a date
to meet them way down South again.
I'd better get on with the rest of the
Cannes news. . .

Strife of Brian

Change of plans for Britain's double-
Oscar winning effects ace, Brian John-
son. He's still due to make his directing
debut for Dieter Geissler, producer of
The Never Ertdirtg Story, which Brian
supplied the SPFX for. However, the
debut won't be Top Gear any more.
When Brian approached scenarist
Steven Volk about scripting his film,
the writer showed him another com-
pleted screenplay from his files. A swift
read of Telepathy - about astronauts
unsuccessfully searching for life in the
galaxies until taking a telepathic space-
)Ockey with them - and Brian changed
course.

Assisted, naturally, by his British
SPFX company, Fotherley, Brian starts
shooting his well-earned break in Octo-
ber. 'Working with directors like Stan-
ley Kubrick is the best education in the
world," he comments. “But time has
come when I should put in my own
thoughts beyond the special effects.
I've had a few offers to direct but either
I was none too keen on the projects or I
wasn't sure I'd be too happy working
with the people concerned." No prob-
lems, apparently, with Dieter Geissler-
or co-producer Robert Gordon Ed-
wards who's worked with Losey and
Visconti in his time.

AIIHaiiSaYles!

A local radio station overdid thing
calling it 'this year’s f.T." but John
Sayles had a whopping hit with his
Brother From Another Planet. It's
everything we want from John. Almost
. . Despite being about a black E.T.
crash-landing smack in Harlem, in the
very human shape of Joe Morton, it's
not really sf. Just an achingly funny
comedy of manners, mores and
'trying to survive in an alien culture,"
says John. He prefers the fantasy tag
'because there's almost no hardware
used.' Almost no money, either. John
paid for it himself, $340,000, shot it in
four weeks with a miniscule crew and
cast (another standout performance
from himself) and became known in
Harlem as The Low Budget Film. 'If
you're not prepared to risk your own
money, why should anyone else?"
says John. That's nearly revolutionary
talk!

Simple Surprise

First, as always, the year's big find at
Cannes '84. As at the recent Dallas fest,
the real knock 'em in the aisles surprise
was a remarkably bloody murder-
thriller called Blood Simple. Simple, it
ain't. But don't ever miss it! That's an
order! Shot in Texas about two years
ago, the film's written and made by
producer Ethan Coen and his director-
brother, Joel. They're New York pals of
Sam Raimi. It shows. They know their
genres, do these siblings, deftly meld-
ing Hitchcock with Poe, and a liberal
dollop of Argento. And judging by their
casting, they're keen on Ridley and
Tony Scott, too.

Blood Simple is an ultra-taut tale- by
turn ghastly and hilarious - of a sleazy
bar-keep hiring a demonic private de-
tective to blow away his wife and her
lover. He proves he's carried out this
mission - only he hasn't. And on col-
lecting his ten grand, he shoots hubby
instead! When loverboy finds him, he
presumes the wife has wasted her
husband and proceeds to mop up the
gallons of blood and bury him - alive,
as it turns out. About then, the story
really starts. . !

Joel Coen shoots all this at skew-
whiff angles, with dusky light, a solo
piano score and scrupulous attention
to every last detail. No cheapie, the film
cost maybe five or six times John
Sayles' newie and it's all up-front, on-
screen, with an unknown, yet
tremendous cast. The done-wrong
hubby is played by Hill Street Blues'
Dan Hedaya, seen at Cannes last year
in The Hunger and just finishing Clint’s
Tightrope. The weasel 'tec is M.
Emmett Walsh, (aka, Capt Bryant in
Blade Runner). Tele-regular John Getz
is the lover and judging by the fiery
appeal of brand new Broadway find
Fran McDormand, it's blood-simple to
see why!

So: first Sam Raimi in 82, then Dick
Maas in 83. Now the Coens. What we
have here is a couple of extremely
powerful new genre-ists. They blow
away any critic's cynicism and will
have you - but really! - on that famous
Edge of your Seat. If not hiding out
beneath it.

Copacetic Cannes

And so, here we are again. In sunny
Cannes (not sunny for long) for the
37th festival devoted to the seventh art.
And it was! The eight art (hyping) took
something of a back seat. A vast im-
provement on the 36th fest, the films
were suddenly, definitely more impor-
tant and imposing this year. Celebrities
were few - even if tele-soapers like
Bobby Ewing and Fallon Carrington
(no more, she says) and all manner of
breakdancers were all over the place.
They and the few bikini babes [not Edy
Williams!) provided the photo-fodder
for the m^ia, while the rest of us

Tony Crciwley'5

i

E

6

Croc 'n' Roll?

Remember /)%aro/'- scripted by John
Sayles, of course. Well, see ya later and
all that and in a while . . . Croc.' Stephen
Cross wrote this one about a 30 ft
crocodile biting through S4m and most
of down-under. Shooting starts around
now. The makers are American which
is probably why they think they are
‘introducing* their Aussie star, John
Waters. John's made plenty of movies.
He's just been left adrift in the rapid rise
of Mel Gibson, Bryan Brown and the
father of 'em all. Jack Thompson, is all.

Dan's Living Dead

Now it can be told . . . What is in Dan
O'Bannon's script for the film that has
George Romero in such a tizzy, Return
of the Living Dead. First, far from not
ripping off or alluding to George's
classic, the opening scene has two
young medical supplies' clerks discus-
sing one of the weirdest things they've
ever seen . . . Night of the Night Dead,
of course! And the movie was a true
story, according to one of them - a
chemical spill near Pittsburg in 1966
seeped into an Army graveyard and
contaminated, not to say reanimated,
the Gl bodies. The Army covered
everything up, of course. Screwed
things up, too. Hence the bodies are
now in metal drums in these guys'
place of work. When they go take a
look-see, well, the old green vapour
leaks out and a few corpses start
atwitching'.

So might George and his producer-
partner, Richard Rubinstein, when they
also get hold of a resume of Dan's
script - which he's due to start direct-
ing in November. On the other hand -
and unless I happened to be, let's say, a
mite merry the night I read it - I
presume it's all a Romero send-up.
Example: Once the dead start stalking
around, the clerks' boss says they can
be destroyed by smashing their brains.
To prove it, he cuts off one zombie's
head ... and the corpse keeps on
coming like a Monty P. jape. *lt worked
in the movie,' moans the boss.

From there on, brains becomes the
movie's in-word. When Tina, one of
local punk-gang, meets The Tar Man -
*a skeleton covered with black tarry
glop, wobbly and loathsome* - he, or it
says, ‘Brains. Live brains!’ and tries to
lunch on hers. Tina escapes but it's not
long before a batallion of dead (cremat-
ing a couple sent their ashes up in the
sky and right back down again in a
novel form of acid rain which does
wonders for the stiffs planted in the
local cemetery) are eating cops' and
paramedics' brains out . . . ‘like
melons'. Most of the gang (Freddy,
Frank, Suicide, Meat, Chuck, Scuz,
Dede, Tina and Casey) become zom-
bies. Freddy hobbles around yelling,
‘Tina, I love you. Let me eat your brains
. . Dede. nude save for muddy
leg-warmers, turns into something
‘hollowed and shrivelled like the Phan-

ton of the Opera,' and munches on
tramps. And one corpse simply uses
the ambulance's radio to order
seconds for everyone. ‘This is Mobile
13. Send more paramedics!’

George 'n' Richard - over to you!

Metrop 'n'Roll

After the premiere of Sergio Leone's
Once Upon A Time in America - after
13 years waiting - the other main event
was, undoubtedly, the first screening
of Giorgio Moroder's reconstruction,
colour-tinting and rock scoring of Fritz
Lang's 1926 sf masterpiece. Metropo-
lis. Movie-buff purists may howl. I
thought it superb. After all, the way
Vangelis scored Chariots of Fire and
The Bounty, we're getting used to
modern music enhancing non-mod
stories. My interview with Moroder is
due in a later issue. Suffice for now to
quote PSO chief Mark Damon in sum-
ming up the thrilling 'new' movie as

'a film of the future made in the past
with the music of the present.’

Rock 'n' Dune?

Incidentally, Moroder told me he might
be scoring Dune, which somewhat
took my breath away. It's rather
stupefying that the year's sf biggie, all
set for a US Christmas opening, has not
signed a composer with six months to
go. 'Well, if it's a fast job they need
they'll have come to the right man,’
grinned Giorgio.

Stunning Wolves

(And I'm not talking soccer . . .) It was,
perhaps, fitting that the lofty, stately
figure of Christopher Lee was impossi-
ble to miss at the big Cannes bash
hosted by ITC Entertainment and
Palace Productions. (It was also,
perhaps, inevitable that I wasn't in-
vited). For the toast of the evening was

the two companies' first film in unison .

. . and rather more important for the
future of our industry, the debut pro-
duction of Nick Powell and Stephen
Woolley's Palace combine. The film?
Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves.
A horror fantasy like no other we've
seen, it was the talk to the town after
packed screenings of a 20-minute
promo reel that was, in a word, sensa-
tional!

Neil Jordan is the Irish novelist, sce-
narist and former John Boorman acco-
lyte who knocked us all over at Cannes
in 82 with his first feature, Angel (US:
Danny Boy). If nothing else, he showed
us that the Irish were a film force to be
reckoned with and this year, Ireland
had its first entry in the Cannes com-
petition (it won Best Actress), two other
fine movies on show in the market and
they were searching for scratch to
finance a pile of other goodies. Steve
Woolley was among those of us
bowled over by Jordan's work and
decided that Palace's first entry into
movie-making must be directed by
him. (Sam Raimi was busy!).

Jordan suggested Angela Carter's
nine-page version of Red Riding Hood
from her book. The Bloody Chamber.
She'd already sent him a short script of
it - ‘very graphic, very dramatic, very
visual it cried out to be built.’ He was
thinking in terms of another Channel 4
film like Angel, then Palace joined the
project and felt it could be tackled for
about £800,000 on location. But no, it
had to be a controlled studio environ-
ment. More money! Two million quid
in all. And so, ITC got into the deal, the
intricacies of which (Palace release
Wolves in Britain, ITC have it for the
world, etc) really don't concern us. It's
the film we want. And judging by the 20
minutes on show, we're in for some-
thing really rather special around
September.

Naturally enough, with such a low
budget ($3m in Hollywoodese), the
film-makers were forced to explore
new methods of tackling expensive
notions - just like Lucas, Spielberg and
Carpenter in their early days. ‘We had
to throw out the rule book on how you
make a special effects movie,* com-
ments Steve Woolley. He and Neil
Jordan were in safe hands . . . Chris
T ucker, the Quest For fire and Elephant
Man, transforms the cast into animals
in a staggering manner. Anton Furst
built the amazing forests - ‘nothing
twee or precious or Noddyland or Dis-
ney,* adds Woolley - at Shepperton.
The cast includes Angela Lansbury,
David Warner, Angel's Stephen Rea
and newcomer Sarah Patterson as Lit-
tle Red Riding . . . Well, no, relax, as
Rosaleen. ‘She's a young girl,* ex-
plains Neil Jordan, ‘seeing everything
that's monstrous and wonderful in life.
It's a film populated by monsters but a
very positive story. It's about confront-
ing nightmares and shaking hands
with them.* Like, er, how do you goo!
(For more on Company of Wolves turn
to page 28 this issue.)

Continued on Page 38

7

mm:

by Tony Crawley

t's been a long wait. Sixteen years. Not too
long, perhaps, when the sequel is set
twenty-six years from now. But ton years
from then. . . 20101

And for the moment, at least, no mention of
the sub-title that confirms the authenticity of
Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 sequel - Odyssey
Two.

Of course, the sequel is minus the master of
the original. Stanley Kubrick is not part of the
MGM team scurrying to get the much awaited

movie ready for Christmas openings (and no
doubt a vast range of Xmas toys). At the
beginning, it was said he would be playing
some supervisory role. For the moment, the
Kubrick name is missing from MGM hype.

Peter Hyams, he who has soared mightily
high with films like Capricorn One and come
(apparently) adrift with others like Outland, is
in charge of the sequel in the triple-threat
capacity of writer, producer and director.
"2010 \s a film about our world and our ability
to live in peace." says Hyams. "It's a film
about. . . hope.

"It's a very accessible story which explains
a lot of the elements of the first film. It's a
mammoth concept, an extraordinary notion
and it lakes a quantum leap forward."

The hype, you'll appreciate, has begun. . .
And these are the first pictures released by
MGM, guarding Hyams' secrets as closely as
if they were NASA's.

Hyams, like Clarke's novel, takes up the
story where Kubrick left it - more or less.
From Earth, that is, rather than where astro-
naut Dave Bowman ended up. Nine years
have passed and Clarke's world has pon-
dered long the mysterious events surround-
ing the fate of the American interplanetary
spaceship. Discovery, its crew - including, of
course, the malevolent computer, HAL.

Time, then, to check up on things. . .

A Russian-American team - "forced to
suppress their political differences to unite
under the common bond of science," it says
here - is assembled for the mission. Their
craft is the Soviet pride, Leonov. And once out
there, in the outer reaches of our solar sys-
tem, they locate the abandoned Discovery. . .
and the curious black monolith orbiting Jupi-
ter, the great enigma of the galaxies.

What then?

Read the book! And work out what you
might do in the circumstances - and con-
straints - of adapting it for the screen. Be-
cause Peter Hyams sure ain't giving very
much away. Not yet.

"A series of odd events unfolds around
them," is all he'll say about the fate of the mix
of cosmo- and astro-nauts and their scientific
partners.

Well, he, or MGM's purple prose writer,
adds a little more. "Then, in an awesome
display, they witness the miracle of creation.
In the brilliant instant, mankind is awed and
humbled as his perception of his place in the
Universe is inexorably changed."

Sounds good. And with such awesome
displays in the capable grasp of triple-Oscar-
winner Richard Ediund (ex-ILM and now
working for Doug T rumbuH's SPFX combine),
one presupposes it's all going to look
damned good, too.

Roy Scheider heads up the cast as Dr
Heywood Floyd, ex-chief of the U.S. space
agency and leader of the Americans aboard
the Leonov. This was William Sylvester's role
in the original, of course. Keir Dullea, howev-
er, returns to reprise his by now classic role of
Capt Dave Bowman and Douglas Rain is once
more supplying the voice of HAL.

Among Scheider's party are Bob Balaban,
finally up yonder after his Close Encounters
with space travel, and the man one never
expected to see flying again after Twilight
Zone, John Lithgow - just about the busiest
character actor in all Hollywood. Our own
Helen Mirren - Best Actress as you'll recall at
this year's Cannes festival for Cal - has the
top female role. The rest of the (main) cast
comprises six ex-patriot Russian actors (a
rock singer among 'em) and one Czech who
form the cosmonautic half of the joint team.

For the record, Peter Hyams started direct-
ing 2010 on Monday, February 6 at the MGM
studios' in Culver City - after a full nine
months preproduction gestation. Last I
heard, he was due to finish on time in mid-
May on the studio's largest two stages includ-
ing Stage 15, now claimed to be "the largest
in the Western world" (I've not heard Pine-
wood's comment on thatl). Then the loca-

8

Left Two astronauts aboard the
Leonov, a Russian spaceship Below
left: The publicity art for Peter Hyams'
2010 x\q^X . Dr Floyd, ex -chief of

the US space agency This role was
played by W////am Sylvester m 2001 - A
Space Odyssev

tions began - strictly on Earth. Three days at
the VIA Radio Astronomy facility in Sorroco.
New Mexico - and a few more in Washington,
D.C.

The capital shooting made more publicity
than the rest of the film put together (for the
moment). Hyams wanted a shot of the White
House. He wanted a little life going on in the
street outside, though. He suggested a bum,
maybe, sitting on a bench. He got his bum. . .
a Hitchcockian cameo acting out by a certain
Arthur C. Clarkel

I must say he looks a rather well-garbed
» tramp. Yes, but then I'm forgetting, he's a
bum twenty-six years from now. And if the
Soviets and the Yanks can get it together by
then, space-wise, at least, maybe inflation
has been knocked on the head, too.

Tacky note; I wasn't joking about the 2010
Merrie Crimble gifties. . . They might come
expensive, though. According to MGM/UA
Entertainment's Merchandising Bulletin,
which advises the world of commerce about

what's coming from the movie world and
what to get into, the business opportunities
for companies wanting to make a killing out
of the sequel cover "virtually anything which
suggests the near future" such as "products,
services, fashions, electronics, packaging." In
short, 2010, which we hope is even half as
good as the original - can we logically expect
it to be more? - has a built-in "intriguing
promotion potential with companies whose
products are state-of-the-art or ahead of their
time." B

9

imimw:

George Takei, Wnlter
Koenig and Mark Lenord

Interview by Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier

G eorge Takei (Sulu) and Walter
Koenig (Chekov) are part of the
Enterprise family. Mark Lenard,
who reprises the role of Sarek,
Spock's father, is not. Yet,
Lenard's association with Star Trek is more
than episodic, since he also played a Romu-
Ian Commander (in the episode "Balance of
Terror") and the doomed Klingon captain at
the beginning of Star Trek - The Motion
Picture.

The three men, easy in their "civilian"
clothes sat down to discuss their involve-
ment with the film.

STARBURST: Did they film any extra footage for the
picture that might allow for ar) exparided television
version?

GEORGE TAKEI: Yes. There's one major sequence
that's missing, and you don't know what happened
before I throw that guard! Also, on Vulcan, we got to
see so much of the Vulcan royalty and the religious
hierarchy and so forth. Spectacular scenes of
pageantry. That was cut.

MARK LENARD: There were some "gags" as they
call them. There were the silver virgins and the gold
virgins, and they had some tricks that maybe would
have intruded. They were carrying the palette with
Spock's body on it, and suddenly the palette floats in
the air and their hands are above it. I don't know if it
didn't work quite right, or if it just intruded. I like the
cut, frankly. I liked it because that long shot coming
down into the temple just seemed to bring the right
atmosphere for the ceremony for Spock. Then there
was a scene where all the crew members come up to
me and different things go on. That was cut out.
Starburst: When Ricardo Montalban resumed his
role In the film, he had to go back and look at video
tapes of the original episode. Mark, did you do
something similar?

LENARD: No. It's running, so I've seen it several
times, and at conventions it's always running, so I
didn't really. I was fairly familiar with it. The only
thing we had to do was. . You know, all the
technical people are new. Frank Phillips is retired
and Tom Burman has taken over to do the make up
effects and so forth. Harve Bennett is new, Rodden-
berry is there, kind of in the background, but he
didn't tend to these technical things anyway. So,
nobody knew how to do the make-up.

They had to dig up the old segment and run it, so
they could see how much grey to put into my hair,
what the make-up looked like, the shape of the
eyebrows and the angle that they're raised. All these
things. I remembered and I had my barber cut my

hair, so I did that on my own. They redesigned the
ears. The ears are new, smaller, more graceful and
they seem to fit with the face a bit more. But, these
people have to practice with it. It's very delicate,
hard to put on so it looks real and blends properly.
We did a test and Leonard thought I looked too much
like his brother, so they had to redo it.

Starburst: Was there ever any talk of referring to
your "wife?"

LENARD: I didn't hear any. The only thing that I can
think of is that there just wasn't time for all this. It
wasn't the story of Sarek and Amanda, and I don't
think they could have made a big enough part to
warrant Jane Wyatt appearing.

Starburst: There seems to be more development of
the characters in this film, a deepening of the
relationships that they share. . .

TAKEI: I suppose that aspect is there, but as actors
we all want to see our characters fleshed out a bit
more. I suppose we got a bit more footage in this
one than we did in Star Trek II and certainly in Star
Trek I. But, I don't think it's really done too much to
reveal other dimensions of our characters.
WALTER KOENIG: I think the characters, in many
cases, are more personalised in this film. You feel a
real sympathy for McCoy and Scotty. They're more
endearing, there's a charm that has not before been
exploited with some of the characters.

Starburst: What kind of input did you gentlemen
have in the film?

TAKEI: As a matter of fact, I tried to persuade Harve
Bennett to cut that reference to Sulu as tiny! I^m
afraid that was the actor's ego getting in the way. I
wasn't too persuasive, obviously! And I'm glad I

didn't succeed now!

KOENIG: None whatsoever here!

Sttrburst: How was it to work with a co-actor as
director?

KOENIG: I think we all concur that working with
Leonard was really a stimulating and very positive
experience. He gave us the license to do the best we
can, and a critical enough eye to censor, edit, if we
were hitting the wrong note. I think we all feel we
had confidence in his taste, that he was well pre-
pared to do what he did. In general, it was a very
congenial relationship. In fact, George and I and a
few of the other people, in gratitude, hosted a party
the last day of shooting, simply as a way of saying
thank you for all the good work.

Starburst: Is it different working with an actor as
director?

KOENIG: Not necessarily. A lot of directors have
been actors. I think those that have. . . well, I
shouldn't make generalisations, but I think it's a
valuable asset to have been an actor. You under-
stand the language, you understand the difficulty
and the problems. . .

LENARD: Sometimes it's a burden for the people
you're working with. . .

KOENIG: That's why I say it's a generalisation that
you have to be careful about. Sometimes the direc-
tor wants to act all the roles, because he has his own
interpretations, having been an actor. That wasn't
the case here. He had confidence in us, and in turn

gave us confidence in him.

Starburst: Is he a director that likes to get it on the
first couple of lakes, or is he comfortable around the
fifth or sixth take?

KOENIG: I think he was adaptable enough to go with
the first take if the first take was good, and deman-
ding enough to take four or five takes if he needed
them.

Starburst: Do you think Star Trek will continue when
it can no linger be done with the original charac-
ters?

TAKEI: Yes, because change, the progress of time
and adapting to it, was part of what Star Trek was
about. The young crew coming on board was a part
of what Star Trek was saying. That as we matured,
we gained experience, wisdom and sq forth. There
are the losses that happen with it, but also there is
fresh, young blood.

LENARD: You know. I'm sure, that the original
concept Roddenberry had when he started the
movies, was to kill off the old-timers at one point
and, even then, replace them with younger blood. I
think that's why he had those younger actors. It
always strikes me as very strange when I see
somebody, like this fellow that was in command of
that sister ship. All these strange people being in
Star Trek. It just doesn't strike me as right.
KOENIG: This picture, particularly, and the sense of
family that it generates, I think, will do as much as
maybe the 79 episodes did toward carving in stone
this group of actors as an entity, and their associa-
tion with Star Trek. First of all, this picture is going to
be very successful. Second of all, the message of
this picture is all for one and one for all. I think both
of those things will probably go further to establish
the mythology of this group of people, than almost
anything that has preceded it. ■

Oppositt p<ge: Utrk Ltnud tstht Vulcin Strek, Spock'slUhtr
Top lofl: The smiling leces of Welter Koenig is Checkov end
George Tekei is Sulu. Bottom lift: Dr KlcCoy IDePorest Kelleil
end Admirel Kirk IWilliem Sheinerl eboerd the USS Enterprise m
Stir Trek Nl: Tlie Seirch For Spock Above: Robin Curtis is It
Seevik Below: A portren of Williem Shetner es AdmirelJemes T.
Kirk.

I f they write a song to go with Dune, they'd
probably call it; Que pasa con la Iuz7
Your Spanish may not be so hot. But everybody
- and I do mean every-body I - on the twenty-strong
cast and a thousand-plus crew knows the phrase.
They could be British like Francesca Annis, Freddie
Jones, Sian Phillips, Sting, cameraman Freddie
Francis, effects folk Kit West and Brian Smithies,
production designer Tony Masters, costumier Bob
Ringwood and editor Antony Gibbs. They could be
the American contingent: like the star Kyle Mac-
Lachlan (he's Paul), Jose Ferrer, Linda Hunt, Richard
Jordan, Paul Smith, Dean Stockwell, Sean Young,
director David Lynch, visual effects man Albert
Whitlock. Italian like the producer Raffaella De
Laurentiis, her mama, Silvana Mangano and, of
course. Carlo Rambaldi or Swedish like Max von
Sydow, , . They know. The phrase is printed on their
hearts by now.

It means: What's gone wrong now. . 7
Nobody knows the troubles Dune has seen - and
somehow overcome.

The fact that an increasing number of Hollywood
projects have been mounted in Mexico City of late-
from Mike Douglas Romencing The Stone to brother
Joel producing Pamela Sue Martin's Torchlight- is
strictly a matter of economy. Certainly nothing to do
with great climate, fresh air and the ease of long-
distance tele-communication. Nor of basic electric-
ity, nor the understanding natures of Customs
officials!

The Douglas brothers had it easy compared with
the mighty Dune operation, which lasted a full
eighteen months in and around the Churubusco
studios in Mexico City. David Lynch started on the
principal photography on March 30, 1983. He finally
called a wrap on September 9. That was hardly the
end of the affair, however. For a further five months,
until February 4 this year, the SPFX work was still
happening. Add to that schedule six months of
pre-production and the use of three, finally four,
different units (two of which were still hard at it,
romancing the grindstone, in the allegedly "quiet"
post-production phase) and you'll appreciate that
Dune was no simple matter.

Now most of the problems encountered by the
cast and crew were normal enough matters related
to the sheer size and scope of such a movie. The rest
of the hassles can be summed up in two words.
Mexico City.

"Everyone was always sick," says Francesca
Annis, who plays Lady Jessica, wife of Jurgen
Prochnow's Duke Leto Atreides, and our hero Paul's
mum.

David Lynch, who has, well, somewhat aged in the
last couple of years since finding The Elephant Man
problematical, nods in agreement. "There was hard-
ly a day when someone wasn't sick or wasn't feeling
good. But somehow we managed. I mean, suddenly
you realised you'd gotten through the day and you'd
done it without so-and-so who'd been home with a
105 fever or something."

The sicknesses were manifold, never mere
malingering and always exotic. As Mexico City
(pop: 1 7 million) happens to be 7,500 ft up, the main
12

complaints were related to lack of oxygen Hence,
diKiness, fatigue, hypo ventilation, sleeplessness
These do not come under the heading of Harrison
Ford's famous luristas. The locals suffer from ox-
ygen-deprivation, as well Only difference - they're
used to It.

Next, the actual air . Mexico City also happens to
be. at that vast height, ringed by mountains which
concentrates all the pollutants rising from the in-
dustrial valleys; plus millions of vehicles excreting
choking diesel Plus there's the stench from the

: to no less an unim-

peachable source than The Guardian, accumulates
at the rate of 800 tons per day and is "beyond the
city's capacity for disposal."

Sure doesn't help the freshness of the air. Smog is
rife!

This, too, affects the locals, 40% of whom suffer
from chronic bronchitis. As, The Guardian put it:
limply breathing in Mexico City is much the same as
smoking your way through two packs of 20 ciggies a
day.

It is, therefore, one of those burgs where, if you
want to see Christmas, you don't drink the water. So,
bottled water only. And keep that covered or the
airborn impurities from so many differing sources
will zap that, too, and well. . . so-and-so has gone
down with the lurgie again.

No great need to add that you have to watch what
you eat, down there, as well. (In fact, hearing some
of the stories, people had to be careful which way
the wind was blowing before they opened their
mouth and delivered a line on the sets). This
particular food problem was not exactly aided when
the local Customs held a Oe Laurentiis shipment of
pasta, spaghetti, in the main - for three months
before letting it out to the dining room, Raffaella had
built for her vast unit.

The Customs held on to most things from wigs,
moustaches and beards to piano wire for SPFX, plus
the film's actual rushes. But the spaghetti blockade
hurt most. Ultimately, everything was released -
except for some Polaroid film stock and a video-
recorderl

Don't know about you but when I'm ill, I like to get
home fast. Die in my own bed, kinds thing. The poor
Dune people couldn't even phone home. At least,
not as fast as E.T. could. At the Churubusco studios,
the unit was accorded two direct lines only. One for
Raffaella, t'other for the accountant. Everyone else
from stars to crew had to wait upon the generosity of
the switchboard girls. They were definitely out to
lunch - and why not, as the switchboard in Mexico's
largest studio was invariably out of order. At best, it
would half-an-hour to get a call put through.

As most of the unit happened to be foreigners,
their calls were overseas calls, of course. This meant
that they and the studio operators were then depen-
dent on the good graces of the Mexico's internation-
al operators. Cue for a second song. These oper-
ators were intermittently announced as being en
junta. Now, with the Falklands still fresh in our
minds, that gives the impression they were off
running the country. Not quite. They were simply -
like so many Hollywoodians when you call - 'in a
meeting". And as if to match Hollywoodians, these
meetings would last anything from two to four
hours. During that time, not only Dune but Mexico
would be cut off from the rest of the world. By the
time you'd won your call, the poor souls at the
other end were probably in mid-slumber and none
too enthusiastic at the Dune-types' excitement at
finally making contact.

Then, there was the electricity. Or to put it another
way, then there was not the electricity! Hence the
budget rose again to buy nine generators to power
the sound stages, at least - while the hair-dryers.

copying-machines and typewriters had to wait on
the whimsicality of the Mexican electricity board.
Torches were at a premium' (Maybe thats why the
Pam Sue Martin film is called Torchlight.)

I suppose that being cut off from the world was
not that bad - rather apt, really, as this hopefully epic
version of Frank Herbert's twenty-year-old book (the
fifth in the series was out in March) is, at base, about
a whole new world. Tocreate it, Tong Masters had to
come up with 75 sets in all, in turn, lor the eight
Churubusco soundstages . plus the locations in

r 9S liio : ‘ ‘

Samalayuca in the film), the car-park at Latin Amer-
ica's largest football stadium and even Mexico City's
Hospital Metropolitano (and not because the stars
were laid up there!).

In a word, David Lynch says the desert was
‘unique*. Then again, what wasn't?

Take Lynch's choice of Las Aguilas Rojas, or The
Red Eagles as his planet Arrakis, aka Dune. Like so
much else, it seemed a good idea at the time. The
photos of the place looked, yes, well, unique. It is,
after all, one huge lava bed, courtesy the eruption of
the Ixtazihuatl volcano some three thousand years
before Christ, resulting in a high, almost surreal lava
rock thrust and grey lava dust all over.

Then, David went on a recce. 'When we first went
there to scout, on the way out, I saw about twelve
dead dogs. And then we got there and it's a trash
dump. We walked down amongst those strange
rocks and there was a dead pig that had a huge slash
- dead. Lots of dead dogs, a dead rat . . .'

Naturally, he didn't take to what he saw. But he
knew what it could be - indeed, should be like. So
the decision was made. They'd use the place after a
decontamination squad had cleaned up the site,
removing carcasses and the debris of generations,
sterlising everything left and carefully sifting, com-
bing for broken glass under the lava dust.

‘There was masses of garbage,' Lynch con-
tinues, ‘bags and bags of it. Finally, the place was
just beautiful - a great looking location.*

Not quite perfect, though, the fine powdery lava
dust erupted in small puffs as feet sank into it - like
Neil Armstrong on the moon. Great! No, not quite.
For Lynch and his SPFX supervisor Kit West (the

Raiders Oscar-winner), small puffs of dust were not
enough to convey the total aridity of the Dune
planet. Out went the order: Send more dust' But a
loti

Tons upon tons of the stuff arrived. Fuller's Earth,
in the mam, dyed yellow and red. And for the three
weeks of night shooting, wind-machines added to
the area's smog by blowing the stuff all over
everywhere - and everyone. Even with the surgical
masks on, goggles and head coverings of one kind
or another, the dust got into every human nook and

cranny.

‘ff you look at the continuity editor's script,*
laughs David Lynch (believe me, he's only laugh-
ing now), ‘you can tell by which pages are yellow
and which are red, what scenes we were shooting
on which of those dusk-to-dawn shoots. As a
matter of fact, you can hardly see the type any
more. Just yellow and red pages!

‘When we all staggered back to our hotels in the
mornings, as the sun was coming up, we always
thought they were going to pitch us out, the way we
looked. I mean, these filthy bums. We looked like a
hundred or so Al Jolsons, every dayl*

Out in the vast wastes of ‘Samalayuca* desert,
there was, naturally another problem. Not dust,
simply . . .

But no, let's keep that ... and the drama of the
biggest f ront-projection screen in the world. . .Tony
Masters' favourite set ... Bob Ringwood's cos-
tumes headache (‘there were four planets to work
with*) . . . Freddie Francis' camera hassles . . . Brian
Smithies' model work . . . Carlo Rambaldi's worms
(er, if you see what I mean) ... not to mention Kit
West tackling the problem - ‘no, the challenge!* -
of allowing bulky Kenneth McMillan's Baron to fly
well, . . . rise . . . well, float eighteen inches off the
ground . . . until the next time, the right and proper
time, the time for our Making of Dune reportage.

This, then, has been a taste. A trailer. Maybe even
something of a citation for the medals Dino and
daughter Raffaella De Laurentiis must be striking
any day now for their long-suffering cast and crew of
Dune.

Of course, if they want a song in English, David
Lynch has that title. ‘Somehow we managed'. ■

13

W hile recently doing some
research I had the opportunity
to check through some of the
books available on science fiction tele-
vision. H was certainly entertaining
making comparisons between them,
and from this I was able to single out
the best and most informative of these.

First are the Starlog TV episode
Guides Volumes 1 and 2. (Volume 1 is,
incidentally, out of print and very hard
to track down). Among the TV shows
covered, only 6 out of a total of 24 are
British series. That's hardly surprising
when you consider the wealth of Amer-
ican material not included. The British
shows listed are Doctor Who (1974-81
seasons only). The Prisoner, Gerry
Anderson's Thunderbirds (never
actually networked in America, but
fondly remembered as the best puppet
series of all), Blake's 7, Captain Scarlet
and the Mysterons and UFO. The inclu-
sion of the Anderson series is fair
enough, but it does give the appear-
ance that sf tv in Britain consists of
nothing else. Perhaps the fact that
Anderfan David Hirsch worked on the
books had something to do with it.

Managing to keep critical appraisal to a
minimum, the books are exactly what
they claim, straight forward no-
nonsense episode guides. Among the
American series in Volume 1 are Bat-
tiestar Galactica, Man From Atlantis,

The Starlost. the animated Star Trek,

Logan's Run, Wonder Woman and Lost
In Space.

Also concentrating heavily on the
episode guide format is Gary Gerani
and Paul Schulman's Fantastic Televi-
sion published by Harmony Books.

Containing detailed synopsis on Su-
perman, One Step Beyond, The Twi-
light Zone, Thriller, The Outer Limits,

Batman, Star Trek, The Invaders, The
Prisoner, Night Gallery, Kolchak; The
Night Stalker, Space f^dand the Inwin
Allen series, the book also features a
brief study of other forms of American
and British tele-fantasy. Kids program-
mes and made for tv movies. The book
does contain a few errors (Bob May did
not speak for the Robinson Robot), and
unfortunately Mr Gerani's comments
on some shows are, for the most part,
pretty banal. But combined with the
Starlog books. Fantastic Television is a
worthy addition to the bookshelf.

Two books dealing in science fiction
television as part of their text are The
Science Fictionary by Ed Naha, and
The Science Fiction Image by Gene
Wright. The former, published by
Wideview Books includes many titles
never screened on British tv. Even then
there are a few mistakes. According to
Mr Naha in Doctor Who the TARDIS
initials stand for "Time and Relative entries are a little annoying. There are
Distance in Space", and the overall many references throughout to Allen's
layout is a little irritating. The Science Lost In Space, and yet somehow the

by Richard Holliss

Above: George Reeves as the mild-mannered Oaily Planet reporter, Clark Kent horn the
Superman tv show of the Fifties. Below: KirkAllyn as the Man of Steel Hooking a little like
Russ Abbott's Coopermanl seen here rescuing Jimmy Olsen, from Columbia's IS-part
serial.

Fiction Image published by Columbus
Books, on the other hand, has the
advantage of numerous colour photo-
graphs, and yet its mixed tv and film

series has failed to be included under a
separate entry.

John Brosnan's Future Tense, even
though publisher Macdonald and

Jane's gave it the worst jacket illustra-
tion ever to grace the cover of a film
book, makes interesting reading, with
a brief synopsis of various tv shows
including such obscure entries as The
Year of the Sex Olympics by Nigel
Kneale, and the awfully pretentious

1990, produced by the BBC. Other
sources on offer include a three part
history of sf tv in Fantastic Films magS'
zine and of course, back issues of
Starburst The definitive book on Fan-
tasy Television has yet to be written
American shows are well and truly
covered in hundreds of publications,
but many great British sf series are
long forgotten by a majority of authors.
Radio has also produced a very im-
pressive selection of sf serials from the
superb adaptions of War of the Worlds
and Lord of the Rings, to original mate-
rial such as The Slime, a chiller in the
Ouatermass mould from almost twen-
ty years ago.

One tv series with extensive cover-
age is The Avengers. Dave Rogers'
brok of the same name has sold in vast
quantities and Dave's publisher,
Michael Joseph, are delight^ with its
reception in America. One major prob-
lem however, concerning nearly all the
programmes mentioned in these
books are their failure to be repeated
on television. Many sf fans have never
seen or even heard of a vast majority of
them. But don't let programmers tell
you that their scheduling doesn't allow
for such repeats. The truth of the mat-
ter is that the tv companies, for the
most part, can't be bothered to tie up
the loose ends involved in rescreening
an old series, eg Equity clearances and
royalties to actors and producers.

One such fate has befallen TheAven-
gers - cancelled by Channel 4, without
completing the run of Linda Thorson
stories. Yet the company claims to
have shown all the episodes that it
originally bought. What is even more
disappointing is that C4 rumoured a
while back that it was purchasing the
black and white Diana Rigg series.
Perhaps the best thing to do is write to
Channel 4 and make an official com-
plaint. Dave's On Target magazine
would also like to hear from viewers
angered by such a decision. With The
Avengers appearing continually in
C4's top ten programmes, cancelling it
in order to show Callan is not really
justified.

However, congratulations to Chan-
nel 4 for its showing of the complete
series of The Monsters, albeit in the
wrong order. For a long time various tv
books have argued with each other
over exactly how many episodes were
originally made. But a new volume
entitled Universal Television Series,
has just been published and gives the
correct information regarding the in-
famous Munster family of Mockingbird
Heights, and that coincides with Chan-
nel 4's viewing number. And finally
now that the Nat-West Bank has de-
cided to use The Flintstones in its
advertising, perhaps Channel 4 could
concentrate on returning the stone age
family of Bedrock to our screens and
hope^lly treat us to a complete run. . .
what was that? ... oh, don't worry
there's only 166 episodes. ■

14

A CYING PLANE!

A FIGHT FOR UFE.

THE search FOR 5POCK.

ParamouK Retires Presents a HARVE BENNETT Producten
STARTREICW THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK-WILLIAM SHATNER-DeFORESTKEUfY
Co-stamng JA^CS DOOHAN- GEORGE TAKER MUTER KOENIG
NCHELLE NCHOIS • MERRITT BUTRCK and OWSTOPHER LLOYD
E«ecutive ConaAant GENE ROOOENBERRY- Muse by JAMES HORNER
E*cutive Producer GARY NAflOIC-

Based on STAR TREK Created by GEIC RQDOETeERRY
Written and Reduced by HARVE BENNETT- Drected by LEONARD NMOY

iBMwBiwamotittt i r w u ofi lihiwMmajiC—cincOTWi— I

A Paramount POure A, UP

NOW IN LONDON’S WEST END AND SCOTLAND

ACROSS THE COUNTRY FROM AUGUST 17

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BpIow l»*ft A ponrait of Ed
Nt^tif lis Spfidter At>ove Jnft
Scott its Gfforqtf IS found im
pafffd on a wv*#// with a Gurkhtt
kniftf Ecch*

A Starburst Inteniiew
with Director Ron Moore
by Alan Jones

n production it was called Splatter. Now
it's called Futurekill. Texas-based Ron
Moore changed the name of his directorial
debut because he didn't want to confuse the
market place with two films in simultaneous
release with similar titles, the other being
Splatter University. Also the word "splatter"
now has a connotation that Moore felt didn't
reflect the content of his movie at all. as he is
adamant in claiming it isn't a blood and guts
film.

This short interview is the result of my
meeting 25 year old Ron Moore totally by
accident at this year's American Film Market
in Los Angeles. He was there checking out the
competition and by chance sat next to me in
one of the V5 hour gaps between films. Such
is the atmosphere at the Market that we struck
up a conversation.

So what is Splatter/ Futurekill about?
Moore explains it this way. "Well, don't
groan, but basically it's about some fraternity
members on a "hell night". They have tarred
and feathered another fraternity's president
and have to make amends by kidnapping a
'No nuke' protester to make him the mascot
of a party they have planned. The nuclear
movement is based downtown and the guy
they eventually grab turns out to be the very
radical leader of the whole group. That's the
character Splatter. It becomes a race to get to
the city boundaries when Splatter puts the
word out that the fraternity is responsible for
a mythical murder. The film is set in the near
future - about 1988 I'd say - and is a very
conceivable plot if the peace movements
carry on the way they are. I suppose it is a
hard film to categorise as it combines a wide
range of things like a New Wave score, camp

humour, serious statements and a smattering
of gore. I think it will catch audiences off
guard as it starts out as a comedy and
switches to being quite nightmarish."

Moore wrote Futurekill viixh two other peo-
ple - Kathy Hagan and John Best - when the
idea for another film seemed to be going
nowhere. "It was called Death in Crimson but
it needed financing beyond a limit I could
locate. So John and I devised Futurekill and
brought Kathy into the project so we could
amalgamate her anti-punk fashion designs
and Ideas."

Next Moore set about providing the most
complete package ever to induce a major
financier to take the first tentative step into
film production. "I had completed story-
boards, a cast and crew already lined up, the
look of the film outlined on colour plates and
some of the music already composed when I
went to see our prospective backer, Don
Barker. He’s a private entrepreneur in Austin,
Texas, who has a lot of companies to his
name. Anything he could ask me was down
on paper somewhere, even a breakdown of
how similar films had fared in the market
place. Futurekill cost just under a million
dollars to make, and I must say I felt extreme-
ly responsible for all that money. But in
Texas, your dollar does go further and I feel

we have achieved a higher quality look than
most other films in our price bracket. We even
shot it on 35mm Panavision panaflex to make
it as good as we could."

Another major reason why the film got
financed in the first place was the inclusion
very early on in the casting process of Edwin
Neal. Neal was the cannabilistic hitchhiker
who put Texas on the map forever in The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre. "I met Ed when I
was a student at the University of Texas. He
would sell us film posters. I pulled Ed into the
project very early on because I realised the
Chainsaw hook was potent enough to get
possible backers interested in the project. It
turned out that he had maintained a good
friendship over the years with Marilyn Burns,
the victim in Chainsaw and when we were
discussing one of the characters in the film,
Dorothy Grim, it both hit us at the same time
that she would be perfect for the part. As she
is the character to kill Ed's Splatter, I think she
certainly gets a sort of revenge on him for all
he put her through in Chainsaw\ Wayne Bell,
our soundman, Murray Church our produc-
tion manager and Robert Burns who did
some of our special make-up effects, all
worked on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
too. Everyone else on the film was in my age
range."

16

/

f

•i

V

Right Sd Ne<il fust after the
second stage of the melt
down Note the tube taped to
his forehead used to pump
blood Neat! Above Bd Neat
as Splatter BcIoa Ron
Moore directs a scene of
Futurei^iil

Moore hat always been interested in film
and has been involved one way or another
whan he worked for Texas Instruments mak-
ing 70mm saismological films for oil com-
panies and managing theatres for the Amer-
ican Multi-Cinema chain. "It was a good solid
bate but nothing really prepared me for the
rigors of full-scale film production. It was
obviously unlike any other experience I've
ever had. But as it progressed. I got more
fluent and it became easier to deal with. My
inexperience made me more open to ideas
and I gave a lot of autonomy to the different
departments. For example I told Kathy to go
wild with the costume designs. 'Grab an
idea,' I said, 'And go with it.' That's why we
have such marvellous things in Futurekill, like
Splatter's intravenous, electronic speed sys-
tem, where all he does is push a button and
amphetamine is automatically injected into
his arm. It was the same with my director of
photography, John Lewis. Although I had
basic guidelines, I wanted him to throw ev-
erything he had into the film. This attitude
really kept us all going and created a very
positive approach. That is why the film is so
dynamic in all areas."

In all, futunkill took 6V2 weeks to shoot. An
initial month was shot last August in down-
town Austin's deserted alleyways and the

remaining work was done this February
which mainly comprised of all the major
effects. But Moore realised very early on that
Splatter as a title had to go. "We were
pushing it slightly, don't you think? John and I
were trying to name the characters in the

script in the same manner as pop stars like
Billy Idol. You know, a really rugged surname
teamed with a homely first one. We made a
list and Splatter just seemed so right for the
character and the title. But whenever we
talked about the film for publicity purposes
we got the reactions you would expect. So it
became a collaborative decision to change it.
The splatter is still there but it's cut to a
minimum. There is one death inflicted by a
ghurka knife but for the most part the violence
is tasteful - one is shot behind a sheet of tin
for example, leaving more to the imagination.
I certainly didn't want to get lumped with
Splatter University or any other gross offer-
ings like thatl"

If all goes according to Moore's well laid
out plans, Futurekill should be on release in
America as you read this. "Magic Shadows,
the company we have set up, will probably
distribute the film. I want more control than to
turn it over to a larger company who could
possibly handle it to our disadvantage. I set
out to make Futurekill a cross between Night
of the Living Dead, Escape From New York
and National Lampoon's Animal House.
There was no one in the production who was
old-school enough to say I couldn't do it, so I
absolutely refuse to sit by and not get the best
for all the team out of it." ■

17

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Then there's the news, the reviews and the interviews,
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Its Duly A

MOVIE

A Film Column by John Brosnan

W hat Indiana Jones and the
Temple of Doom really
needed were the missing dino-
saurs. I kept hoping they'd make an
appearance as the movie progressed
but my hopes were in vain. No dino-
saurs. Not even a little one.

You see, about a year ago some one
who shall remain nameless, but writes
for this magazine and has the initials
‘AJ', returned breathless with excite-
ment from Hollywood with the revela-
tion that the new Indiana Jones epic
was going to feature dinosaurs. * Jeep-
ers, what a whizzer of a good ideal' I
remember exclaiming at the time, pic-
turing in my mind's eye Harrison Ford
cracking his whip over the heads of a
herd of Tyrannosaurus Rexes.

For months I went around telling
people I knew the Big Secret about the
Raiders of the Lost Ark sequel. 'Dino-
saurs,' I would announce slyly. ‘Mil-
lions of 'em.* My status rose among
my peers. People would point and
whisper at me as I went by, saying,
‘Brozzer knows what Lucas and Spiel-
berg are going to do even before they
know it themselves.*

Of course Lucas and Spielberg kept
totally quiet about the dinosaur factor.
Not a word about dinosaurs crept out
while the movie was being shot at
Elstree Studios. When Harrison Ford
hurl his back during the shooting they
claimed he'd fallen off an elephant but /
knew he'd fallen off a dinosaur.
Elephant indeed! Who did they think
they were trying to kid?

Then a couple of months ago the
person whose initials are *AJ' broke
the awful news to me. 'No dinosaurs. I
was misinformed . . .'

I refused to believe him. I had my
heart set on seeing Indiana Jones slog-
ging it out with a gaggle of overgrown
reptiles. Nothing less would satisfy
me.

Even when I saw the Temple of
Doom trailer I didn't give up hope.
True, the trailer didn't feature hide nor
hair of a dinosaur but I thoughtperhaps
they were saving them up as a surprise.
And actually the trailer didn't look that
hot, despite all the pyrotechnics. It
seemed that the centrepiece of the
movie was going to be some under-
ground altar built over a pool of bub-
bling lava. Surely, I told myself, that

had to be more to the film than just
that.

I should confess at this point that if
there's one thing guaranteed to put me
to sleep in a movie it's a 'ritual sequ-
ence*. You knowthe thing I mean- lots
of people in robes or masks chanting
stuff like 'Hail to the Great Horny-Toed
One* while a high priest or priestess
intones at length atxiut the powers of
darkness while holding a chicken in
one hand and a Black and Decker drill in
the other. I find such scenes unutter-
ably boring and from the look of the
trailer there was going to be a fair few
of them in Indiana Jones . . .

It's a ploy, I told myself. When Spiel-
berg and Lucas have lulled the audi-
ence into a false sense of security with
all the chanting and intoning they'll
bring on the dinosaurs.

I arrived at the preview screening still
hoping for the best. No dinosaurs men-
tioned in the brief synopsis but a look at
the credits perked me up. There were
lots of Model Makers and Effects Ani-
mators listed. That had to mean Dino-
saurs.

I sat back confidently. The movie
began. The couple on my right also
began. Chattering, that is (they kept it
up throughout the film) but I didn't
care. I was sure the dinosaurs would
drown them out when the time came.

The first 20 minutes or so of Indiana
Jones were pretty good. The nightclub
sequences were excellent and I liked
the early stuff in India even though the
girl, Kate Capshaw, was no substitute
for Karen Allen and the jokes involving
her were somewhat corny (stuff like
getting on the elephant backwards;
falling off the elephant and landing in
the water; not being able to eat the
funny "foreign* food etc). It was prob-
ably more to do with the way the part
was written rather than with Ms (^ap-
shaw, but I found her character very
grating. Her sole function in the film
was to scream a lot and act like a total
idiot - presumably Lucas was using her
to have a dig at the feminists but who
knows, he might consider her to be a
believable character . . .

The film starts to go seriously dow-
nhill after the 'chamber of descending
spikes* sequence (lifted almost entire-
ly from the ‘garbage crusher" sequ-
ence in Star Wars, but who cares?) and

18

Jones and his friends discover the
Temple of Doom itself. As I feared it
becomes "hail to the Great Horny-
Toed One' with knobs on. /awnryawn
. . . Okay, so I woke up a bit when the
High Priest shoved his hand into the
victim's chest and plucked out his still
beating heart. That sort of thing is
always good for a laugh {though I
couldn't figure out how the guy stayed
alive without his heart: was it sup-
posed to be a hypnotically produced
illusion? But if so how come Jones
almost loses his heart for real at the
end of the movie? Huh?). And the scene
where the victim was lowered into the
pit of fire and sizzles away into nothing-
ness was spectacular too (though I
hear both these scenes, and others, will
be drastically trimmed by our ‘Born
Again' censors before the film is re-
leased).

All very well but what's all this heart-
plucking, person-roasting stuff aboutl
Where's the meat of the movie? So far
all we've had is a bunch of loonies
having the Thuggi equivalent of a sec-
ret barbecue whereas in Raiders Indi-
ana Jones was after nothing less than a
super weapon powered by God Him-
self.

Okay, so there's some waffle about
the Thuggis trying to get all five of their
sacred stones back together again but
as they never succeed in doing this we
don't see what would have happened if
they had. I was expecting a manifesta-
tion of the goddess Kali at the very least

I remember checking my watch at
the time Jones discovers the Temple
and thinking, "Almost an hour to go.
Surely we're not going to spend the

rest of the movie underground. They
probably escape into a secret valley. A
secret valley full of dinosaurs . . But
no, apart from a sequence at the end
involving a rope suspension bridge the
movie does stay underground. More
boring ritual followed by lots of action,
true, but action that doesn't have the
inventiveness or wit of Raiders or even
the opening sequences of Irtdiana
Jones itself. The big roller-coaster
chase on the mine railway, for exam-
ple, was technically well-done but basi-
cally unexciting.

And as for the closing scene with an
elephant squirting water at the heroine
and everyone laughing, etc, I cringed
with embarrassment. It was like some-
thing out of an old Tarzan movie. What
next for poor Indiana Jones, I won-
dered. In this story he was saddled with
a wise-cracking kid - will he next be
seen with Cheeta the Chimp?

True, the climactic sequence with the
rope bridge did feature some large
reptiles but these were not dinosaurs.
They were crocodiles. I like crocodiles
but they are simply not in the same
league as dinosaurs. Sigh.

ROMANCING THE
JONES

Strangely enough I'd seen another film
recently that featured a climax with
crocodiles, a rope bridge sequence and
a soft, city-bred girl having to cope with
life in the jungle and the tough adven-
turer who rescues her. The film was
called Romancing the Stone and
though obviously a deliberate imita-
tion of Indiana Jones I found it far more
amusing and inventive.

lodiana Jones Idoing his best Humphrey Bogart impressioni contemplates chucking
something ar Starburst columnist John Brosnan to stop his ramblings about dinosaurs in the
Temple of Doom.

STARBURST MAGAZINE is the only place to find all the latest
news, reviews and interviews, covering every aspect of
Fantasy on Screen.

Every issue of Starburst contains a mountain of facts on all
the latest horror and science fiction releases in the cinema.

on tv and on video.

Where else can you find advance news on such potential
crowd pleasers as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,
Streets of Fire and the long-awaited Steven Spielberg/Joe
Dante collaboration Gremlins!

Starburst is also a mine of information about hit genre
movies of the past. Recent movies in the Starburst Classics
spot have included the notorious Peeping Tom (1959),
Them! (1954) and Vincent Price's House of Wax (1954).

As an added bonus, throughout the Summer, Starburst
will be presenting a series of competitions. We'll be giving
away tickets to previews of fantasy movies (beginning with
Fire and Ice in July), and you'll get a chance to win video
copies, direct from the manufacturer, of The Twilight Zone.
Never Say Never Again and WarGames. All this plus our
regular spot competitions in which we give away movie
posters and other film-related memorabilia.

All of which adds up to, "How have you managed without
a subscription for this long?"

To subscribe to Starburst for a full year (12 issues) just fill
out the coupon below and send it to;

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19

T op^ wo// wanders down a
picturesque set. Left Sarah
PaitBrson as Red Riding Hood
taka. RosaleenI stroUsf
though the enchanted forest.

'■ r-:-sfr\ -

St.irhi/rst presents a special
report from the set of this
new, low-budget British
movie. Our intrepid reporter
Alan Jorxr.^. quizzed producer
Steve Woolley and special
makeup effects wiz
Christopher Tucker about the
problems of turning a man
into a wolf on £10 a day.

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A.f" •- I .- It) f a; 11 , fr-isliiA.idfijiiy.

Chris TuEfkor, who ctesiuneLl ‘hr; iticrnlihSif
make up lor The E/epf’rinl Man, :s iusi 'si A-i O'
th<; many ,igrM8bie »i,rpris<;S Hhoul Thm
Contpany (tf IVo/ye.v

Ha'jsrl on Anrinla Carlor's jh.s.! ifto:v, l.his is
Ihi; tiisl flirt) froit) Prtliitrj PriJ-'iiCilcot, thn
compupy who run the sticnossfu! Sss's riot:
ma in Uondon ami who h.avs r»ss"tti‘/ rr;
li)3bnd such mefla h.ifS as D/ya, Ttw Pvif D’naf
,11.(1 Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence Co
fin.'inct.'d by IhC writ) lulovisian nplil'. fhi-ii.rriy
pri: sold to Cftarrnel tf. the CuiniJnny of
Wolves stars Angela lanslMiry, David War
nor, Stephen Rea. 13 year old Sarat. Patter-
son and artother surprise beiiiti kept iirvriDr
wi.ips IS the guest appearance of Ir'ionsr;
5tam|i who agrerid to the r.arnert foi the |,ri-er;
of a new still.

Pxeifutive anri crr-producer Sjtephen Woo!
tey .iilmil*. that it's tiard to enplain exai tly
what The Coirtfiany a! Wolves is about when
iicople ask Basically, it sefms the story e. an
adult parody of the traditional tale of "Little
Red Riding Hood". Director Neil Jordan,
wlitisi; last film Anijel so nnpn-s'atd the pro
diicnr';. s iys. "Its (irimei.rjnceins are a ynting

Tt>|i >t hl/nrsin,in qites throutlh <l hornfllr rnetarnorfjhnWk
,i.s /„• t.hiifu/rs mill a tvri// AlKive h.irt o! the
werrvroU Ir.inslormatirtn srrne a.s ilevieeil ht Christopher
tin her Bct^w Sarah Patterson ,is RosOlr^r'rwrfh Ani/el.i
7 arishirry as the qraniirnother

21

THE COMPANY

^OF

WOLVES

girl's dreams and nightmares about wolfish-
ness. " Others say it works on a multitude of
levels where reality and imagination in-
creasingly blur; where dream sequences are
enclosed in other dream sequences before
our heroine, Rosaleen, goes into the threaten-
ing forest to meet an attractive young hunts-
man who makes a bet that he can reach her
grandmother's house before her. You can
also bet that he's more of a wolf than even she
supposes!

And that will bring us to the climax of the
film which will be the shocking state-of-the-
art metamorphosis of man into wolf along the
lines of An American Werewolf in London and
The Howling. Mention those two films to
Chris Tucker, though, and you'll see the
sparks fly! In his eagerness to immediately
differentiate his effects from those of Messrs
Rick Baker and Rob Bottin he told me, "Com-
pany is nothing like those movies because
here we are dealing with men turning into
wolves on all fours - not werewolves or
wolfmen. I'm not interested in doing anything
that's been done before. I want to break new
ground. I've cut down on a lot of the stuff
you've seen before, like hair sprouting on
legs, because I want this film to be a totally
new experience".

Tucker has had difficulty keeping up with
the main unit's shooting - as he says, "Live
wolves don't read scripts" - and he is only too
well aware of trying to do too much in such a
short space of time. He cites the film's ulti-
mate transformation as a case in point. "This
is the scene where a wolf's snout emerges
through the mouth of the hunter. That scene
had to be filmed at the dress rehearsal in case
anything went wrong. The eyes were radio
controlled and there were so many cables
down the dummy's throat that at one stage it
didn't look like the mechanisms would fit. The
original idea for this transformation was to
have the whole of the hunter's face turn
inside out to become the wolf but it was
imp)ossible to do on this schedule. To push
the mechanism back in the mouth without the
skin splining needed a lot of surgical jelly, I
can tell you! The Elephant Man was difficult
enough but this film posed a whole new set of
problems." To make sure that other major
effects were done in time, like a full scale
mechanical wolf. Tucker found he had to
contract them out.

And another person who has been feeling
the pinch is producer Steve Woolley. Woolley
should be a model for us all. His career rise
has been nothing short of meteoric since he
started managing the Scale cinema when it
was originally based just behind Goodge
Street underground station. I've known him
for some time now and as another one of his
talents has rested on the journalistic side, I
know how upset he gets at misrepresenta-
tion, so I'd better watch my step!

Now he's on the other side of the fence,
how does he feel? "As a producer I see all the
grime and the toughness that is necessary to
get the film right. And as you know it is so
easy to be flippant about that. Being at the
sharp end all the time one tends to get
aggressively defensive about everything.
You yourself have one way at looking at a film
and now I find my view has shifted 180
degrees. Animals, children and special

sm.

Top: The scene that toot a lot of nets and patience to achieve. Above : Danielle Dax as a wolf woman. Far Right- /f yoo gt
downtothewoodstoday. . . Part ofa dream sequence. Right: Terence Stamp as the Devil, obscured by the car window pane
is chaff eur driven.

effects are one helluva package I can tell you!

Being completely honest, this is the hardest
thing I've ever done in my life. I've had ulcers,
nightmares, the whole works."

The reason why Palace entered the fraught
area of film production is, according to Wool-
ley, deceptively clear. "We made a bit of
money from distributing Diva and The Evil
Dead so we had to do the most logical thing
with it. Palace is a young group of companies,
an aspect that is reflected in the film, by the
way, and we have been very lucky with our
ability to choose such great titles to release in
this country. It was very much a mix of the
right place at the right time and having the
guts to go with a film that other distribution
companies deemed as uncommercial.

Diva was a breakthrough film as it is an art
movie that has gained a far wider audience
acceptance than that term usually allows for.
The problem then was that other companies
would be keeping an eye on us to see what
titles we would show any interest in, and as
we can't compete with the majors like EMI
and VTC, the only way we could get a film for
worldwide copyright was to make it
ourselves. The Company of Wolves really
came about because we wanted to channel
our integrity into something we could nurture

along ourselves."

At a final cost of £1 .5 million. The Company
of Wolves does represent an enormous gam-
ble for Woolley and Co, but one that could
reap large dividends if it looks as good on the
screen as it does on the studio floor.

In some ways. Palace are playing it safe by
spearheading their production schedule with
a genre film, still one of the most bankable
commodities around. And Woolley is only
too well aware of that. "I suppose that is true,
but what do you want us to do? Please don't
categorise it as a horror film though, because
in the purest sense I don't think it is. I think of it
in terms of The Elephant Man - accessible
horror for a wide audience. Horror movies
tend to fall into two categories these days.
The tangents are either the Friday the 13th
type or The Thing typo. One is extremely
nasty and tends to involve the disembowell-
ing of teenagers and the other goes over-
board on special effects. If you try and strad-
dle those two aspects, as I think Schrader's
Cat People did, and aim for an intelligent
horror film, you tend to fall between two
stools. Whether this is the right approach or
not, this is what we're trying to do here - we
are being nasty, but there is a good reason for
it."

22

Woolley likes to expand this theory further.
“With The Company of Wolves, we are trying
to combine the wonder of Diva with the
imagination of The Evil Dead. That's why
there are two producers on this movie (the
other being Chris Brown, the brother of
socialite journalist Tina Brown) because we
don't want to sacrifice the look, the design, or
the beauty of it for the sake of special effects.
At the same time, however, just because it's
going to look good, move spectacularly and
have a fabulous soundtrack we don't see why
it shouldn't have great special effects as well.
Art movies aren't supposed to have all the
modern horror trappings. Company is a bit
like 2001 and Dr Strangelove as we're trying
to reinvent the fantasy genre so it will be
treated with the same respect as, say, an
anti-nuke film. Angela Carter herself thinks
what we are doing is great and she's not
really intellectual at all, she just loves movies
like the rest of us."

Despite all the hard work he's putting into
The Company of Wolves, Woolley knows that
most of the first timers involved with the
production are pulling it along with sheer
guts. "It's an exciting experience for all con-
cerned," he says, "It's Jordan's first studio
movie. Brian Loftus, our lighting cameraman
has never worked on a film before. Our
production designer Anton Furst, although
he worked on Alien and Flash Gordon is
making his debut here and thinks it is the film
he was destined for. For George Fenton, who
wrote the music for Ghandi and Bloody Kids,
this will be the score of his life. Everybody has
been putting in that 10% extra that you often
can't expect. There's the working till midnight
and still getting in at 5 o'clock in the morning
after waking up at 3 a.m. to scribble notes
down. People don't normally do that on films
but that is what they are doing here. We are
pushing the personnel harder than they've
ever been pushed before, including
ourselves. Mike Hodges, the director, came to
visit the set the other day and looked at the
forest we have built on one of the sound-
stages and gave us a rough estimate of how
much he thought it cost to build. He said
£150,000, but in reality it cost a tenth of that
because we know how people feel about this
film from the polystyrene artists up. Every-
body is throwing everything they've got into
this picture. Even if it turns out to be a turkey,
which it might well do, I could only have done

what I've done because I've really believed in
this project. Nothing has ever been closer to
my heart."

Long before The Company of Wolves was
in production, I can remember getting a
telephone call from Steve Woolley, asking me
to name every film Chris Tucker had ever
done. I should have realised at the time what
it was all about. So much for investigative
journalism! The truth of the matter is though
that Woolley never had anyone else in mind
for the sprecial effects other than Tucker, as he
explains. "Tucker was the first person we
went to. Only three people have been in-
volved in this project as long as Chris Brown
and I have. The others are Jordan, Furst and
Tucker. Tucker admittedly is getting a pitt-
ance for what he's trying to achieve which, to
be honest, is to outdo such contemporaries
as Rick Baker. When we realised the special
effects would be one of our most costly areas,
we isolated it and storyboarded the entire
film - not once but twice. Chris Hobbs (of Xtro
fame) did one set so when we went to T ucker
we could confront him with concrete ideas,
not nebulous airy-fairy ones. Tucker's side of
the story is that he doesn't have enough
money. Ours is we told him last August how
much he could spend. That is the producer's
dilemma. Once a price has been agreed, you
expect it to be done for that."

In common with Tucker though, Woolley
feels that the simplest ideas are the ones that
work best and in that respect he feels that The
Company of Wolves has more in common
with the films of Michael Powell and Un Chien
Andalou. "We are using the old-fashioned
tricks, like moving the trees around in the
forest. There's very little cheating really. For
example we have a ballet dancer playing the
huntsman for the prelude to the climactic
transformation. We started shooting his
naked back as the idea was it would split open
at a certain point and the wolf would emerge.
What we discovered was that this guy had
muscles on his back that were far better than
any special effect. It turned out to be the
ultimate in natural bladder effects. It was
simple, erotic and effective. This morning's
shoot with Kathryn Pogson that you saw. . .
that looked like a scene out of The Birds to
me. An undefinable extra was definitely
added and as a result, we get much more than
just a bridging scene towards the wolf's head
being chopped off."

While those scenes are examples of things
you can't possibly script, one major problem
turned out to be dealing with the live wolves
themselves. In common with T ucker, Woolley
had no idea how difficult these animals would
be to handle in the studio environment. "The
wolves were trained to a point but what we
found was that they couldn't be expected to
be ferocious and angry on cue. We have a
scene where a wolf dives into a pit following a
live duck and then tries to claw itself out. You
can't use a real duck because of RSPCA
regulations, so when you take the bird away,
all you are left with is a mean wild animal
cheated of its preyr Although we had endless
problems we did manage to shoot the wolf
shot of all time for this film. It's where Sarah
Patterson is licked by one of them. It was a
risky shot but Sarah was fantastic and it
certainly paid off. A scene like that makes up
for all the disappointment of not being able to
get a lot more real wolf footage."

If all goes to plan. The Company of Wolves
should be on release in Britain by September.

I for one am counting the days mainly be-
cause I went down to Shepperton expecting
to see an arty low budget pretentious piece of
fluff being made. I should have had more faith
in Palace, in retrospect, and now I'm just as
excited about the whole film as the produc-
tion seems to be. What Palace have been
doing has been called "a renaissance for the
British film industry" and that may not be too
far from the truth. As Woolley says, "This is
the way to make movies in this country. I want
people to see us as pioneers in some respect.
People think I'm cocky, I know. They say,
'Who's this new boy, the slob with the long
hair? What does he know about movies when
I've been working in this industry for 20
years.' I have been getting a lot of that. But
most of the people we have dealt with have
responded to our enthusiasm, so we are
building up a close circle of associates for the
next time out. There are some people who
obviously won't gravitate towards us, like the
British Film Institute, who see us as villains
taking Angela Carter and selling her to mil-
lions of people when they want this audience
for themselves. They all think we've taken the
guts out of the project so I'm fully expecting
people to say we sold out. But we don't
deserve that after all the effort we have put in
and the hard slog it has taken to pull The
Company of Wolves off." H

23

THE SEARCH FOR SPOCR

mimw:

DeForest Kelley

Star Trek 3 - The Search for Spock
is an important addition to the
already legendary story of Trek.
Not only does it mark the feature
film debut of Leonard Nimoy as a
director, but it proves that the Star
Trek characters are popular
enough even to transcend death.
Hollywood-based writers Randy
and Jean-Marc Lofficier 'tracked
down two of the most popular Trek
stars, DeForesf Kelley and William
Shatner for interviews shortly after
the new film opened in the United
States.

I n person DeForest Kelley is about a stone
thinner than he appears on screen. He credits his
slender build to a life of physical activity,
although he admits that he's not been as active
as he might over the last few years. Re has an
easy charm which makes easy to understand
why so many Trek fans have been taken, not
only with the character he plays, but also with
the man himself.

"I enjoyed watchirig'Star Trek III better than I did
Star Trek 11" says DeForest Kelley. 'I think jhis one
comes closer to the tv series than anything we've
done before . . . i don't know about Bill, or Leonard,
or the rest of the cast, but it's difficult for me to look
at a film, something that you're such a part of, and to
really get the full impact of it You're too close to it."

In this third film, the character of McCoy becomes
pivotal to the story and, indeed, has some of the best
lines in the picture Keley does not take credit for any
of that. "I didn't really have any input in this’ one,
except maybe a line here and there," he explains.
"Of course, you try to do everything you can to help
It Leonard, Bill and I, and everybody else, hive been
very adamant on trying to get it back, as much as we
can, to the feeling that we had in the series. That
takes a lot of input For example, they had written
the line, 'That green-blooded sonovabitch, it's his

revenge for all those arguments he lost'' and then,
they took the 'green-blooded sonovabitch' out. So, I
called Harve and said, 'Why'd you take that line out’'
He said, 'Well, De, it's a little strong. We decided it^s
a little much.' And I said. You're crazy' The fans'll
love It, leave it in, please'' He said. Well, we'll see.'
So, I s'ayed on him about it, and they left it in Now,
I've heard that the audiences laugh so loud in the
threatres, that they ride right over the 'It's' his
revenge lor all those arguments he lost'' which is
funny, and they're practically losing it'

"At the time we shot it, I told Leonard that we had
to leave a space in between 'green-blooded sonova-
bitch' and the next line, because of the laugh. He
said I was right and agreed to do it. But, we got into
the filming and I never thought about it again, and
neither did Leonar4 So. we didn't cover it with a
long beat, or some sort of a business weicould have
done until he said the next line. . ."

At the very end of the film, Spock looks at McCoy
and gives a look as if to say, 'I carj't believe I had to
mind meld with this guy'' According to Kelley, there
was a lot of discussion about the scene between
Nimoy and himself. "Before we even started the
movie, Leonard took me over to show me the Vulcan
set and told me that was where the end of the picture
was going to take place. Then, I said, 'Leonard,
about the ending. What do you think of this, when
you're looking us all over, you come to McCoy,
stand and look at him. Then, you reach forward as if
to give him another mind meld, and McCoy says,
'Oh no' Not on your life'' ' He laughed like hell, and
then threw it away, saying, 'You've got to be
kidding''

"Then, toward the end of the picture, Leonard
came to me and said, 'We've been talking about
your suggestion.' After all this time, I'd forgotten
and I .said. What suggestion’' He said. My

24

approaching you at tTie very end. I really think it
would be wonderful to get a laugh there. But, I don't
know how we're ever going to be able to do it, with
Bill. .'Because, you know, they'd had that drantatic
scene So, we fished around with this. Leonard said
to me, 'We'll )ust try to ad lib something, and see
how Bill takes it.' But Bill had done this very dramatic
scene, and I just knew there was no way we could do

It. . .

"When we actually shot the scene, Leonaft stood
there, looking at me, but he never did tell me to
speak up and say to him. Why don't you put your
hand up and do this’' SoTie walked around, waiting
for me to say it and I'm looking at Bill, who's
standing looking at him. wondering what the heck is
going on. I said, 'Leonard, do you have an idea for
this’' And he said, 'I was )ust trying to think of
something . .' I just couldn't say it, because I knew
Bill was going to explode Afterwards. J.eonaKl

reasons. "For Instance, Bill and I did a scene in the
elevator, which at the time was very important. It's
McCoy's first appearance in the film, and he's
behaving very strangely Bill walks in and Wonders
what the heck is going on with him. A really weirrt
scene, but it turns into a terrific scene Now, it opens
with McCoy in Spock's quarters. I saw why they cut
It. Had the general audience seen the elevator scene,
they would have itriticipated the fact that it was
McCoy quicker."

When asked if he had thought about possible
storylines for Star Trek IV, after a momentary pause
to think about it the actor says, "My guess would be
that they're probably going to have to do something
with the EnterpriM. There's got to be a new ship, we
know that. I would imagine that what they would do
IS not linger on Spock any longer. I thjpk they will not
even go into the fact of are you feeling better’'
They'll lust gel right into something that is an

came over to me and said, 'Why didn't you say il’‘ I
said, 'I couldn't, Bill would have never bought it.' So.
we came to that look, which Ithink worked out well."

Another scene that Kelley had suggestions for
was the bar scene which is somewhat reminiscent of
the cantina scene in Star Wars. Kelley comments,
"What we wanted to do is to open that scene
outside, and have McCoy coming on the sidewalk,
where he'd naturally encounter other aliens and
people from other planets. As he enters, he stops
and looks across the street, and we see a 'Star Wars
Bar'' Once, the Lucas people were alt there, and we
were all talking about it. But they figured that they'd
have to do a whole rerigging of the set and it would
be a whole big deal. That's what I wanted to see. I
think that would have been wonderful and I wish we
had done it.”

Some times, Kelley discovered, scenes that
seemed pivotal t6 the film were cut out for logical

mim:

DeForest Kelley

exciting story, and get on with it.’

Although he himself has no desire to direct, Kelley
points out that, *1 wouldn't object to seeing Leonard
direct again. It's very seldom where you see a good
film where the actor is real actively involved in the
film. The very fact that Leonard was out of this film
until the end, gave him all that complete freedom for
concentration that is needed for Star Trek. But, if he
comes back and directs the next one, and has an
active role, it might get to be a hassle. I've seen
Leonard, stretched out on his back, still trying to give
direction. So, it's difficult. I think it needs all of the
concentration.'

The multi-faceted actor was born in Atlanta,
Georgia, in .a Baptist family. He had sung in the
church choir and then on a radio program on station
WBS, which had earned him a singing engagement
with Lew Forbes and his Orchestra at the Atlanta
Paramount Theatre. He was 17 when, after graduat-
ing from high school, he made his first trip outside
the state. ‘I came out to California when I was. a
young kid,' remembers the actor, 'to visit an uncle

of mine. A guy, who was a director at the Long Beach
Theatre Guild, saw me sitting in a restaurant. He
wanted me to go over and read for a play, because
he thought I was right for it. I did, and I ended up
doing the play. So, I remained a rnember^f the Long
Beach Theatre Guild for about four or five years.’

During the war, Kelley was spotted in a Navy
training film by a Paramount talent scout. The result
was a screen test and a contract. Kelley remained
with Paramount for two and a half years. His first
starring role in a feature film was in Fear in the
Night, a 1947 thriller about a man who commits
murder under hypnosis. Moving to New York, Kelley
appeared in stock and on television, including
shows such as Playhouse 90 and Schlitz Theatre. His
26

southern origins and lanky looks made him ideal for
the then-popular westerns, where he quickly de-
vloped into one of the most popular villains on the
small screen, and soon on the silver screen as well.

'I had never played a 'heavy' before in my life,’
remembers Kelley, laughing. 'I did a show called
You Are There with a director that was a friend of
mine. He said, 'De, I'm going to put you in as a
heavy. It'll be great fun for you to do.' I said,
'Terrific!' So, he put me in 'Gunfight at OK Corral' on
You Are There as the lead heavy, Ike Clanton. I wore
a handle-bar moustache, chewed tobbaco and spit
... He was a mean cat! I just had a great time doing
it, and did not think anything about it. When the
thing played, I think practically every producer in
Hollywood saw it! So, I went right into another
western after that, called Tension at Table Rock."

Tension at Table Rock (1956) starred Cameron
Mitchell and a young Angie Dickson, and was
directed by Charles Marquis Warren. Then, Kelley
found himself back at the OK Corral in John
Sturges's famous Gunfight at OK Corral (1957), in
which, this time, he played Morgan Earp. Strangely
enough, Kelley was to play the fateful western
confrontation a third time, as one of the Clantons in
Star Trek’s 'Spectre of the Gun,' which must be

some kind of record!

He then starred in the civil war epic Raintree
Country, directed by Edward Dmytryk (1957).
Sturges saw him in Raintree, liked it, and again hired
Kelley for The Law and Jake Wade (1958), which
remains, to this day, one of his favorite Westerns.
Dmytryk then came back with Warlock{^9bS), where
Kelley acted with Richard Widmark, Anthony Quinn
and Henry Fonda. Kelley names Warlock as another
of his favorites, 'I liked Warlock very much. It was a
mood piece, and didn't make a lot of money here,
but it was really a very good western, a classic. At
the end of that, Dmytryk told me, 'Someday I'm
going to get you out of this heavy thing.' I forgot all
about it, but sure enough a picture came up with

Bette Davis and Susan Hayward, called Where Love
Has Gone (1964), by Harold Robbins, and he put me
into that!'

In the meanwhile, Kelley had made a number of
television pilots, including Police Story and 333
Montgomery, for Gene Roddenberry. The latter was
about a criminal lawyer in San Francisco. 'The
reason I had done that one,’ remembers Kelley,
'was because I had done the lead heavy in three
Western pilots, and they all sold. So, the producer
thought he'd put me in.’ Other television roles
followed steadily, and Kelley almost inevitably
guest-starred on most famous western shows of the
times, such as Gunsmoke, Zane Grey Theatre,
Rawhide and Bonanza.

"\ did about five or six Bonanza episodes,’ re-
members the actor. 'Hoss Cartwright wore that big,
tall hat. We were doing a scene, and I was in on it. He
had a little, tiny radio, and he put it under his hat and
turned it down very low. We stepped under the
sound boom to start the scene, and the sound man
said, 'Hold it! I'm getting some outside interference.'
We'd step out and he'd get nothing. So, he'd say,
'Okay, it's all clear.' and we'd go back in. This went
on about ten or twelve times and the sound man was
going nuts! Finally, Dan Blocker took off his hat and
there was the little radio sitting on his head!'

In 1966, DeForest Kelley was signed to play Dr
Leonard 'Bones' McCoy on Star Trek. He describes
the change over from horse opera to space opera as
'a kind of an odd thing. About seven or eight weeks
before I went into Star Trek, I hopped over into
Bonanza and played a Doctor who operated on
Hoss. But, it wasn't really too much of a switch. The
big thing was just trying to adhere to the character
and get him straightened around. It was a matter of
adjustment. We had about four or five episodes to
try and feel those things out, then it just fell into
place.'

Kelley describes how the character of McCoy was
progressively created. ‘There was a character out-
line for him, layed out by Roddenberry. Naturally, I
tried to take that into mind, as much as I possibly
could. He was more or less described as a future day
H.L Mencken. Also, as the least military of any of the
group, a man full of compassion, emotional and
outspoken.

In fact, in both Star Trek 'pilots,' The Menagerie,
and the original TV episode Where No Man Has
Gone Before, the role of the Enterprise doctor was
not played by Kelley as McCoy, but respectively by
John Hoyt and Paul Fix. McCoy's first appearance
was in The Man Trap. Kelley explains, 'I started out
in the series with nothing to do. When Gene showed
me the first pilot, with John Hoyt and Jeffrey Hunter,
and asked me what I thought of the doctor role, there
was something about it that just knocked me out.
When Hunter came in, and let his hair down with his
doctor, the way they yakked it out. . . I thought that
was so terrific, in a far-out film like this, to see people
really hashing out an everyday problem. It just hit
me like dynamite! I thought, 'You know, this could
really be a good role if they opened it out.' So, I told
Gene that I'd like to do it, provided that the role
would open up to give that doctor more as it went
on. He said, 'It will, De. You'll open it.' And I said, 'I'll
damn well try!'

‘When we got started, I thought it would never
open. It was like wading through ice or something to
get results. But, it finally started to happen with the
mail. The fans began to pick up on the character. The
mail began to come. They opened it up for me. They
insisted on more with the Spock / McCoy relation-
ship. So, it was slowly building, and it got to the
point where I thought that, if we had gone on for
perhaps another two years, I think that, maybe, they
would have alternated the leads, such as Bonanza

used to do. One week it would have featured
Leonard, the next week Bill, then me or Jimmy or
somebody. Which I thought would have been a
marvellous idea, to give each person a story.'

Kelley sees McCoy as a part of himself, and sees
the role serving as Kirk's conscience. ‘To a great
degree, he (McCoy) is often the catalyst. He's the
guy that can talk to Kirk in any manner or form that
he wants to. Had I read the scripts many years ago, I
would have picked McCoy out of al the characters to
play. When Gene contacted me for Star Trek first, he
gave me the part of Spock to read! I'm glad I didn't
take it because I don't think anyone could have
played Spock better than Leonard. He is truly
magnificent in that role! As I think Bill is excellent as
the Captain. . . I just like the character of McCoy for
me, even though he's not as 'heavy' as the other
two. I think he's closer to what I am. I think every
actor injects some of his own personality in his part.
There's a great deal of myself in McCoy like I think
there's a great deal of Bill in Kirk, and a great deal of
Leonard in Spock!*

The demise of Star Trek led to a Saturday Morning
animated series, produced by Filmation in 1973.
'That was kind of fun," remembers Kelley. "I didn't
think so at first. I thought, 'Here we all are, a bunch of
cartoon characters now. Poor little actors, out of
work.' But Gene Roddenberry said to us, 'I feel that
anything we can all do together to get Star Trek back
will help it. Even this might create talk again.' So we
did it, and he was right. It did create talk. It got
marvellous reviews here. Then, the newsprint
started to pick up on the phenomenon of Star Trek
shortly afterward. Then, the conventions started.
We were getting all this fan mail, as if we were still
shooting the series. All those years the mail never
stopped, and here we were, walking around, not in
the series, gening all the acclaim of being in a hit
series and not gening paid for it!’

After much hesitation, this popularity led Para-
mount to start production on Star Trek: The Motion
Picture. In spite of the film's commercial success,
both Kelley and the fans were disappointed. 'We
originally were not going to do a motion picture
when we did Star Trek I," explains Kelley. 'We were
going to do a ninety-minute television show. In one
respect, I almost wish they had done that. Had
maybe done six specials a year. That way, we could
have done more things, more stories, instead of
doing a film now, and then waiting a year and a half
before another one can come out. I think it would
have been better for the fans.

‘Also, it was not easy to convince the Studio that,
as successful as Star Trek was, the fans nevertheless
had a deep feeling about the characters, and that
you couldn't just ignore it. In my opinion, that was
the mistake they made in the first film. They ignored
the relationship that was so popular in the TV series.
They were thinking in terms of motion picture, and it
was hard for them to conceive that the success of
Star Trek on TV was in its people. Basically, Star
Trek is the story of a group of very qualified people,
moving about centuries beyond, and doing a job,
and doing it well. Having passion and warmth and
caring for each other. T rying to seek out new worlds,
without blowing each other apart. The series was
certainly all that, but the first film was not. It relied
too much on hardware and special effects.*
Understandably, Kelley was wary when
approached to do Star Trek II. ‘At first, I turned it
down,* he remembers. ‘I strongly disliked the first
script that was handed to ifie. I felt it didn't work, so I
had a big conversion with Harve. He was upset
about it. I said to him that I'd rather not be in it
.because the role was not meaningful, and the script
just was not a good Star Trek script. He said, 'Well,
what do you think we should do?' I said, 'I think you

should hire a writer that has written for Star Trek and
rewrite it!' He looked at me real funny and said,
'Well, who would you hire?' I said, 'Gee, Harve. I
don't know. I'm not in that line. Harlan Ellison's a
good writer, get him. . .' *

But, in the end, Harve Bennett brought in Nicholas
Meyer, himself a writer, who worked with him on the
final polish of the script. ‘I feel that Meyer brought it
to life and really made it a kind of Star Trek script,*
explains Kelley. 'When he sent me that script, I said,
'That's more like it,' and I went with it.*

Kelley had some more input in Star Trek II. *1 told
Harve that having Spock killed off on about page
fifty of the script was all wrong. I said. 'You've lost
the audience already. You've given this big blow to
them that Spock's dead. Now you've got the second
half of Bill wrestling with Ricardo Montalban. Who's
going to sit still for that? That's not Star Trek.'

‘There's also a scene on the bridge where I start to
beam down with Kirk. We're heading for the eleva-
tor, and Spock has a line. He says, ‘Jim, be careful' as
we walk into the elevator. I told Nicholas Meyer, the
director, that McCoy would absolutely have some-
thing to say here. I said. This is ignoring McCoy
completely. I think he should have said, 'We will!' *
Well, Meyer bought it, so that line is my line, and
was thrown in there by me. This is an example of an
injection of trying to keep those characters in line.
But many times, you can't do it. There are a couple of
things in Star Trek II that I tried to sell quite heavily,
such as Kirk and McCoy having a quiet moment
together after Spock's death. I still miss it, and I think

the two recent Star Tre* films, Kelley says, ‘Gene's
falling into the background came more or less from
Star Trek I. That picture just about drove him crazy.
He became physically ill as a result of the frustration,
not being able to convince the studio hierarchy of
what he thought the film should be. The doctor told
him he should take it easy or he might really be a sick
man. . .*

The Star Trek phenomenon has also taken its toll
on the members of the cast. Kelley is philosophical
about it. 'The show has a personality that's so
unique and different, that it really doesn't bother me
too much. Frankly, our audience, on the whole, is an
extremely bright bunch of people. My dentist, my
doctor, my lawyer are all the biggest trekkies in the
world! So, as an actor, you realy ask yourself what
you realy want. If you want to win an Academy
Award, it's going to be awfully difficult to do. Or, if
you want to be the all-pro actor and devote your life
to theatre, well, that's a different ball game too. . .
The other things that I have been offered just haven't
appealed to me. The money doesn't have to be all
that great, if it's something that you really want to
do. That makes it a different ball game.

'I've done a lot of thinking about this. We've had
all the adulation. I don't see how actors can have any
more adulation than we've experienced with the
fans. So, when I put all this together I think, 'Well,
you're pretty damn lucky and should be very proud
to be in it, and to be a part of it.' That's the way that I
have decided to look at it. Star Trek has been a very
. good thing for me, it's given me a certain amount of

Opposit* pige: 4 fonriit of DoFonst Kolly ts Dr Loontrd "Bonos ' McCoy. Above: Scoitk IJomos Doohoni Chocto/ ly/oltor Koonigl
ond Admirol Kirt lyiilliom Shotnorl in o scono from Sur Trek III: The Seirch For Spock

that would have been excellent. But you can't win
them all!*

Star Trek II was an unqualified success, since it
made over $75 million at the box office during that
first summer release. More important, perhaps, it
was also a success with the fans. Kelley credits
Bennett for this, ‘Harve deserves a lot of credit for
this because he had to take Star Trek without ever
having had anything to do with it, or being aware of
the enormous cult following. He had to screen all
those episodes. He began to read the fan mail, the
fanzines. He even went as far as to correspond with
some of these people. But as he did all this, he began
to soak up Star Trek and speak the language.*

Asked to comment on the role of Gene Rodden-
berry, described as that of a technical consultant on

security that I might not have ever gained otherwise.
In this business, if the telephone doesn't ring, you
don't work. It takes a lot of guts. I've waited many
times, and it never did ring. So, you have to stop and
look at it from a realistic standpoint. I've decided I'm
pretty damn lucky to be a part of it,*

Kelley adds, *l'm very content. I'm really very
content the way I am. In fact, too much so for my
own good. I hate myself for being that way, I really
do. I can do nothing the best of anybody you've ever
seen ! Truly ! I wonder where the heck the time goes. I
don't finish the LA. Times until one o'clock in the
afternoon. But, if something came along, that I
would say, 'Wow, that's really interesting, I'd love to
do that,' I'd do it. The money wouldn't be that
important.* *

27

iHmm:

William Shatner

W illiam Shatner walks in the room,
dressed in his T.J. Hooker uniform.
TJ. Hooker \t an ABC television series,
in which Shatner plays the part of a crusty
Los Angeles police sergeant. The actor has
recently directed several episodes of the
series.

In spite of the strangeness in taking about
Star rre/r with a cop'of today, Kirk's personal-
ity quickly comes through and, soon, the,
uniform is all but forgotten. In between
discussing his Canadian origins, his hobbies
(breeding Doberman pinschers and quarter
horses!) and eating a sandwich, Shatner
analyses his contribution to Star Trek III.

The emphasis irt the latter two Star Tre* films has
been more on the characters than on ‘the monster
of the week* style story. Shatner sees that as a
continuing trend, and is happy with it. ‘It's true that
the series always used to have what I called the
monster of the week," he says. 'And, that's the
nature of episodic television. We liked to think on the
series, that there was a level of humanity and
philosophy that stood out every so often. I think it
was one of those elements that made it so popular.’

Shatner indirectly blames the success of Star
Wars for losing the spirit of the TV series in the first
picture, ‘When I first heard the conversations about
Star Trek /, it was directly after the success of Star
Wars," he comments, ‘and I think the studio had
always held back from doing anything with Star Trek
because of their reluctance to believe, very naturally
so, that something like that could have a viable
economic life. When Star Wars hit, they decided to
do a Star Trek in the same manner. So, Star Trek I
was, in my view, an attempt to catch up to Star Wars,
which meant making it big, spending $40 million in
special effects, etc. Although it made a lot of money,
it was not a terrific film. It was good but it was not
terrific. It was not in the tradition of Star Trek,
because by that time, everybody in the manage-
ment who knew what the elements were, had died
off or moved away.

'Those of us who did know, and said, ‘Come in for
a close-up on this face. . .'were told, 'Close-up? This
is movies! You guys don't know movies, you're
used to television. We need grandiose, epic propor-
tions.' So, of course, it being their money, they won
and this mold of Star Trekwas struck. But then, they
had a conflict. It made them a great deal of money,
but it was not Star Trek. And, they had spent so
much money on it, even though it had large box
office, that they didn't make much profit. So, they
said, ‘If we make a next one, let's spend less money
and do what you guys want to do, a little lumanity."

‘I think it's an interesting confluence of econo-
mics and art that became these last two shows,
which is that, at one point in the series when we
didn't have much money for special effects, and that
almost forced us to do more human stories. Now,
we have more money, but they want to save it for
special effects, so they're doing more human stories
againl"

Shatner is very positive when he comments on
working with the two previous directors who made
the Star Trek pictures. ‘Each director has their own
characteristics,* he says. ‘Robert Wise came to that
film with a justifiably legendary reputation. When he
said ‘We're going to put the camera over here and
go over there.' You said, 'Yes, Sirl' because he had
won all these Oscars, and it meant a geat deal. One
didn't question the father figure who knew all. Not
that he didn't allow us certain frHdoms, but he was
Robert Wise, one of the great directors in Holly-
wood. Nick Meyer had written the script, and we
were so in love with it, and we were so impressed
with his creative abilities, that although it was only
his second picture, we felt that his imagination
should be given full flower. So, here he was, he had
written the script, but he hadn't directed very much.
Whatever help we could give him was preferred,
and he would accept it or not accept it, depending on
what he felt was right or wrong. But, he had written
the script, and therefore brought to it another
unquestionable aspect."

The relationship with Leonard Nimoy was, again,
something different, for Nimoy had been a cast

member, Shatner explains how he dealt with this.
‘Leonard and I are dearest, good old friends. We
have shared a mutual struggle with the Paramount
managamant in various things that we struggled
with. Whether it was the script, or a prop, or a
concept, or even the dressing rooms, we ware
always united. Wa would go into a dressing room
and say, 'Wall, what do you think?' We'd have a plan
whenever wa had somathing to deal with with
mangagament. Wa were together, we were brothara
in flesh and in apirit. Now, auddenly my brother was
saying, ‘Well, I think you should do this.' And I was
saying, 'Now, wait a minute, I think I should. . .' and I
felt alone. So, there was an awkward period of time
for ms, and I don't think it was the same for Leonard.
Or maybe it was. I never realiy talked to him about it.
But, there was a period of a couple of weeks In which
I felt alone in sn^hing that I might have objsctsd to.
Although I had no reason to. Both Harve Bennett and
Leonard Nimoy, and in fact the whole of Para-
mount's managamant, have given nothing but love
and affection in most areas. But, from my point of
view, it was more awkward in the beginning than
with either of the other two directors. But, that

28

ilowly erased itself at I realized that Leonard had a
point of view end knew what he was doing.*
Bringing Spock back to life, the central theme of
Star Traklll. was, according to Shatner, an accident.
‘It was never anticipated,' he says. ‘An accident
happened. Maybe it wasn't an accident if you don't
believe in accidents. It was really very strange. We
were getting ready to do the death scene of Spock in
Star Trak II — and this wasn't scripted — and
Leonard pinched DeForest, and DeForest fell, then
he put his hand on DeForest's forehead, and he was
looking for something mysterious, so he put his
hand up and said. 'Remember.' Then he took off and
Spock died. Because. Leonard didn't want to play
Spock any more.'

The actor gives his own explanation for the death
of Spock. ‘They argued and went through every
possible permutation and combination to get
Leonard to play Spock. Leonard said, 'Look, I've
spent my adult life playing Spock. I want to go on to
other things. It is stifling my career, stifling my
creative impulses. I need to stop.' Very understable.
We were all very pained, but we understood com-
pletely. So this was the death of Spock. But, for
some reason, Leonard said, 'Remember.' It was
mysterious, it was Vulcan. . . It was meaningful to
somebody In Star Trak, but we didn't know what.
And, was the end. Spock was dead, and the
questi 9 n was would there be a Star Trak III and how
would we do it without Spock, and that was a whole
other qutition. But, as far as everybody connected
with Star Trakmt concerned, Spock was dead.

‘Then, the possibility of Leonerd directing the film
came up. Leonerd seid, 'If I can direct the film. I'll
pley Spock egein.' Then the problem was, how do
wo bring him beck to life? And, Harve Bennett in a
tremendous creative leap, used that 'Remember'
and brought him back in a very viable, valid, science
fiction wey. So, it was an accident, or fortuitous
circumstances, or fate.'

Shatner does not feel stifled playing Kirk, 'be-
cause the character is different, because he is in
effect the hero, and heroes are universal.' He adds,
*1 never did feel stifled in the series. And, I think that
any actor would have paid the management money,
rather than received money, to tackle the roles that
I've been asked to do in the last two films. I just love
being Ceptsin Kirk in the way they've been writing
him.

When asked about Star Trak IV, Shatner professes
ignorance. 'It's totally open-ended, unless Harve
has got some plots in his mind that he hasn't talked
about. I have two things that I'd like to see. They're
contrasted, and yet they're unified. One is that I'd
like to see romance, and I'd like to see gritty realism,
with hand-held cameras and dirt under the finger-
nails.'

At the time of the interview, Paramount had not
yet announced that, because of the very good box
office figures generated by .Star Trak III, it had again
signed Nimoy to direct and write Star Trak IV. Asked
about what director he would like to see on the
series, Shatner replies ‘There are a number of
bright, young directors that are making their mark
now. It seems to me that the best thing that we can
do with Star Trak, is to bring some brilliant, young
direvtor, where he wouldn't be afraid to try new
things and not let stodgy tradition get in his way. I
don't think I should mention any names, ft's just that
there are a group of fine directors who are doing the
best work, and I'd love to see them come and do a
Star Trak movie.'

Shatner is evasive when asked if he would like to
direct one of the future Star frekfilms. ‘I didn't say
that II would), until recently!' comments the actor.
'I'm so tied up with T.J. Hookar where I'm direct-
ing. . . But, the truth of the matter is that I'd like to.
It's just a matter of whether I can.' ■

29

wmmi:

THE GRBK FUM TYCOON

a BLIND DATE with director Nico Mastorakis

Interview by Roger P. Birchall

^^ lind date, a new "hi-tech
#^^thriller", is very much a 'Hollywood'
film. For a start Blind Date stars
Joseph Bottoms, Kirstie Alley (the vulcan
officer in Star Trek II- The Wrath of Khan) and
Keir Dullea (of 200 1 -A Space Odyssey fame,
and soon to be seen reprising that role in
2010). It also features Lana Clarkson (the star
of the New World release, Deathstalker) and
James [Animal House) Daughton.

The plot concerns an advertising execu-
tive, Johnathan Ratcliff, who is obsessed
with an old highschool flame who was bru-
tally raped before his eyes. While supervising
the shoot of a promo film he mistakes a
beautiful model, Rachel, for his old girHriend.

In the same city a psychopathic killer is on
the loose. Known to the police as "the scalpel
murderer", he hunts for young, pretty girls
and savagely slashes them to death.

One night Johnathan follows Rachel and
her boyfriend, Dave, to a park. Dave mistakes
Johnathan for a peeping tom and runs after
him. In the ensuing chase Johnathan smacks
his head on a tree and is knocked uncon-
scious. Waking up in hospital his girlfriend,
Claire, tells him that he has lost his eyesight.

Johnathan finds adjusting to his new life of
darkness difficult. He seeks the help of a
famous neuro-surgeon. Dr Steiger, who has
developed a tiny computer which can trans-
mit visual signals to the brain, bypassing the
optic nerve. Despite the danger involved,
Johnathan agrees to be the first person to try
the revolutionary "Compuvision" and under-
goes laser brain surgery. With the aid of this
minute computer (cleverly disguised as a
Sony Walkman) Johnathan is able to see
again, but can only interpret the world as
graphic green outlines. He can now record
everything he sees on tape and replay it
directly into his brain.

One night, he witnesses a murder, but due
to the limitations of his Compuvision he
cannot see details of the killer's face. Ulti-
mately Johnathan is involved in a one-to-one
confrontation with the scapel murderer.

Throughout the story various voluptuous
starlets undress, take showers and get
slashed to death. All good clean fun. . .

Blind Date is unashamedly an exploitation
film, and a cheap one at that (it was made for
just $1 million). But there is mo^e to this
movie than meets the eye. From a technical
point of view Blind Date has all the visual
excitement of a Dario Argento film, with
stunning use of camera work and colour.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of Blind Date is
to discover it is a European production. The
director is Nico Mastorakis, who wrote the
screenplay with Fred C. Perry and also pro-
duced the film for his own company. Omega
Pictures.

Mastorakis has been producing and direct-
ing TV since 1967 and feature films since
1974. In 1978 he wrote and produced one of
the top fifty all-time grossing films in Amer-
ica, The Greek Tycoon starring Anthony
Quinn and Jacqueline Bisset. He also made
Demon Island with James Earl Jones and
Jose Ferrer, and the unusual science-fiction
film The Next One, starring Keir Dullea and
Adrienne Barbeau (see Starburst 46).

Starburst spoke to Nico Mastorakis while
he was in this country to promote Blind Date.

STARBURST: Blind Date is a title along the
lines of Dressed to Kill. Were you aiming to
make a thriller in the Brian De Palma mould?

NICO MASTORAKIS: It was a little bit Brian
De Palma-ish, yes.

Most De Palma films contain some visual
tribute to Alfred Hitchcock. Are you influ-
enced by Hitchcock's work?

Realistically Hitchcock is every director's in-
fluence, whether it be subliminal or con-
scious. Hitchcock has influenced all of us.
We've been watching Hitchcock for so long,
even if we don't realise we're doing Hitchcock
we do Hitchcock.

With the new generation of filmmakers like
De Palma / think today's audience may forget
the suspense film roots of Hitchcock.

The young moviegoers? I am not sure if they
have seen enough Hitchcock to draw the
parallels. They're not the kind of movies that

30

Photos by Stove Cook

run on TV all the time so the younger genera-
tion doesn't know Hitchcock except what they
see through De Palma movies. It is inevitable
when I film suspense I will draw the line
towards Hitchcock. I don't like to draw the line
towards De Palma because I don't like vio-
lence. I think if Oe Palma was doing Blind Date
it would have a lot more explicit violence on
the screen. With me it's subliminal: I like
some violence because I think it is an element
which is very cinematic, but I don't like to
portray it explicitly. I don't like latex effects
and heads exploding on the screen.

In Blind Date it is more effective, and disturb-
ing, just because the violence takes place
off-screen.

“Realistically Hitchcock is every
director’s influence, whether it be
subliminal or conscious. “

I think today directors are keen to put violence
in movies just to satisfy the appetite of the
video market, which is becoming increasing-
ly hungry for violence. But I find it is more
scary to keep the suspense high with sub-
liminal violence, and the menacing forces
being kept unseen and being suggested
rather than exploited. That's what I tried to do
in Blind Date. I don't know how much I
succeeded but I did it as a conviction, not
doing violence for the sake of violence.

The cinematography in Blind Date was styl-
ish. The art direction reminded me of a Dario
Argento film. Are you familiar with his
movies?

Yes, I am. I have seen Tenebrae and some of
his earlier films. Dario Argento is a European
director who pays attention to the aesthetics
of a movie. Fortunately, or unfortunately,
most of the young directors when they do 'B'
movies, and by saying 'B' movies I mean
movies that don't have enough money to
spend on big main production designers,
tend to totally ignore the aesthetics. That is
why most of the cheaper movies you get from
America are dreadful looking. But it is not a
special characteristic of the smaller movies.
You can see a lot of the studio productions
that look terrible, that haven't paid any atten-
tion to the art direction, to the cinematogra-
phy, to anything. But Europeans tend to pay
attention to that, and I'm a European and
can't help it.

Blind Date contained as many red-herrings as'
an Argento film. It certainly keeps you gues-
sing. I was convinced the killer Swas Keir
Du! lea's character. Dr Steiger, just from one
shot of the surgical gloves.

You pinpointed one of the very discrete
red-herrings in the picture. Because you had
seen the killer putting on the gloves I thought
that one shot would probably draw the atten-
tion of the audience to something completely
different.

Keir Dullea seems to suddenly disappear
from the story.

His part was to give that guy back his vision in
an electronic way, and guide and advise him
and from there on "disappear". You cannot
keep a character alive in a picture when
you're dealing with 90 minutes of which 40 is
tense suspense and action. It's tough.

Will Joseph Bottom's main character, John
Ratcliff, return in a sequel as stated at the end
of the Blind Date credits?

We are preparing a sequel, although it is not,
as stated, called. Run, Stumble and fall any
more because it's not a commercial title. It's
called Ultrasonic. Again the concept is very
contemporary, it deals with the ultrasonic
pregnancy examination of most of the preg-
nant women in this country, about 70 to M
per cent. According to some sceptics it is very
dangerous and is going to create a generation
of mutants four generations in the future. The
effects of ultrasonic on the foetus are not
obvious now and the children are fine, but
they're very worried about what happens
four generations later because of the disturb-
ance in the cells. They have studied the
radiation from the actual infa-reds in the
X-rays in comparison to the ultrasonic radia-
tion. And although the ultrasonic radiation
appears to be innocent and white they stu-
died it under time-lapse photography and the
movement of the cells seems very erratic and
abnormal. So they think the cells in the foetus
are very crucial. If you disturb the cells at this
stage maybe four generations later it will

“I find it is more scary to keep the
suspense high with subliminal
violence, and the menacing forces
being kept unseen and being
suggested rather than exploited. “

produce dramatic results and change the face
of the population of the country.

So it's to be a kind of biological thriller?
That's right. It's about a genetic timebomb.
We will take the computer vision gimmick in
Blind Date a step further and now of course
it's fully developed and doesn't look like a
Walkman anymore. It is implanted in the guy.
The only characteristic he retains is a tiny
headset. Now he can see more detail, instead
of outlines he can see in picture lines and he
can adjust it to see more or less detail
depending on how much power he wants to
consume. He can also shake hands with
someone and immediately he gets a reading
of the skin tissue and the blood pressure and
every other element.

Which he can play back?

RightI He can even tell when somebody is
lying because the new unit has a built-in voice
stress analyser and everything.

Why the idea of the Sony Walkman? Was it
because of the current Walkman craze?

You got all the answers so right you surprise
mel That is why I didn't choose to construct a
new fantastic-looking, exotic unit.

Not a Brainstorm helmet.

Right. I thought so many kids around the
world are wearing a Walkman they would
relate to a hero with a Walkman headset and a
case instead of just making him look very
conspicuous to anybody.

/ was wondering if Sony had money in the
picture. . .

No. In fact they didn't even give us a Sony
Walkman, we had to buy the one we usedi
There was a lot of colour symbolism in Blind
Date, such as the scene lit by red neon
Coca-Cola sign. Red to symbolise danger.
The type of art direction Nicolas Roeg uses.

I love Nicolas Roeg's work. From his early
one. Don't Look Now, which I think is still my
favourite. It has always been one of my
favourite thrillers of all time. Subliminally
everytime I do a thriller I think of that as an
example of how to set the mood, how to set
the chills and how to set everything. He has
also been a magnificent cinematographer
which he will never overcome. He always
deals with great visuals on the screen. So I
decided to follow that line when I was discus-
sing the style with my cinematographer. He is
very flexible, versatile and fast, and so we
decided to go the difficult way which is to use
the colours and the light as symbols.
Although it is very subliminal and 90% of the
audience won't get the symbolism of the light
to me it worked.

There are a lot of beautiful women in Blind
Date, most of whom end up slashed to death!
Do you think this will attract an outcry from
certain radical feminist groups, the same
ones who threw paint at the screen when
Dressed to Kill was released in this country. If
so, does this concern you?

Any kind of reaction to my movies never
concerns me, especially in this case because
I'm a feminist at heart. I believe any kind of
reaction is good publicity for the movie. I
have no intents of violence towards women. I
don't believe in it. I think through a long
tradition in movies the feminine element is
the most vulnerable. So you always have to
have a female, preferably a beautiful one, in
peril so that people can root for her, and a
male who is strong and dedicated enough to

“To my mind in creating stories,
scripts and books I have always
believed that a hero is maybe the
worst kind of coward that there is
on earth. “

save her life. That is exactly what Blind Date is
about. It is an eternal myth that you have to
acknowledge, it comes from the ancient
Greek tragedies. What is violence against
women anyway? I am against violence
against anybody if it is committed in real life.
Is the film's main character, John Ratcliff, a
hero? '

He's an anti-hero. He's a circumstantial hero.

31

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Nico Mastorakis

► What is a hero? To my mind in creating
stories, scripts and books I have always
believed that a hero is maybe the worst kind
of coward that there is on this earth. It is
totally unpredictable how he is going to react
under pressure. In the case of Blind Date to\\n
Ratcliff is motivated by guilt of what had
happened in the past and what he hadn't
done to save his girlfriend from being raped.
He pays back an unknown girl, although he is
semi-convinced that she is not the one. So
this is the stuff that makes heroes today.

A scene in Blind Date which ! thought perhaps
lost sympathy for John Ratcliff was where ha
took revenge on the three thugs who beat him
up earlier in the film.

You may be right, but all heroes are human
and they have instincts and feelings of re-
venge as well as their good instincts. I don't
think that when you show someone on the
screen completely idealised, where he does
all the good things on earth but nothing bad,
he isn't believable anymore. When we tested
the film in America the audience cheered in
that scene. It was such a nasty scene where
the bad guys beat up somaone who is blind
and helpless and they all felt he owed it to
them.

You are based in LA now, do you have offices
in London?

I come to London only for post-production. I
use the English facilities and the quality of
post-production as a must in my movias. If I
can use English crews I do, which is very rare
because they're expensive.

How healthy is the film industry in your native
Greece?

Not healthy. If you're talking about the local
industry thay are producing pictures between
40 and 70 thousand dollars per picture which
gives them a poor result on a three week
shoot. Bad comedies, slapstick, stuff like this,
which can bring the money back in the local
market. But they don't have a vision of putting
in more money and fnaking international
scripts with more international orientated
directors, American or English stars so they
can hit the English-speaking market. It's not
good enough.

Whet was your original inspiration for the
story of Blind Date?

If you're trying to pinpoint a seat of inspira-
tion I don't really know. I think that it started
working within me from the visuals. In a small
movie, that Hollywood could never have
made for the money that we made it, I wanted
to put exciting visuals as an example of what
you can do when you combine great hi-tech
elements with a good viable story. I started
working on the visuals first, and I tried to fit
them in with the concept of the story.

Where were the film's computer graphics
created?

Everything was done in England. All the
post-production.

How dose is that actual concept of a blind
man "seeing" with a headset?

I think it is just around the corner. I was
watching talevision in the United States the
other day and I saw a similar procAs. only it's
bulkier. They had the plug implanted into his
skull to make him see through a video camera
and transfer all the signals processed into his
brain and he could see blurred images. So it's
quite realistic.

And get it smaller and smaller.

Well, with all the digitalised stuff they're
putting out today they will come up with it
within the next three years.

How would you like to see Blind Date sold?

In America the film is being sold wrong. The
distributors there have chosen the approach
of a slash picture. The theory is that there is
enough audience initially to be drawn to tha
theatres by a slash film, and of course that
audience will be greatly surprised when they
see Blind Date. Probably word of mouth is
going to draw more audiences. Their theory
is that every major hi-tech thriller has failed to
make it big at the box office. They mention
Altered States as an example, and Brainstorm
and Iron, which were three major dis-
appointments box-office wise. I think they're
wrong. To the extent that if I could I would like
to control which way the picture is put out. In
this country I think the picture is put out in the
right way because the element of suspense
and murder-mystery is there. We suggest to
all our buyers around the world to go with the

hi-tech murder-mystery concept. I'm happier
with that.

You have made mainly "adult" films. Would
you like to direct a family film?

Adult? What exactly is tha terminology for an
adult film? I mean if you do a film for adults
the kids want to see it.

Would you like to make an E.T.?

I love Spielberg and anything he does I would
love to have done it. I am not envious but
when I see a Spielberg film I think if only I
could have done something like that myself. I
wouldn't do anything that is 'pink', like naive
for the sake of family entertainment, like the
Disney-type of pictures. I like to make movies
that entertain me primarily. I wouldn't make
anything boring. It is a good measurement of
what you want to do in life. If you feel you're
going to be bored - forget iti ■

32

33

THE

'4mIm

OF

ITAU AN FANTASY

Part Two: From Kinski to Zombies
A Starburst Index by Alan Jones

Continuing Alan Jones alphabetical appraisal of
one of the world's largest film industries..

KINSKI. Klaus IReal name Nicolaus Narsynksi.)
Kinski made his name in numerous spaghetti-
westerns until he broadened his villainous spectrum
to include horror films as well. He sums up his career
succinctly in his autobiography, published in France
in 1976, called "Dying to Live" in which he says he
hated always being categorised. After Nosferatu,
Android and Fitzcarraldo however, that is no longer
true. Coplan saves his skin/DevH's Garden (1967),
Target for Killing (1967), Count Dracula (1970),
Venus in Furs (1970), Creature with the Blue Hand
(1971), Cold Blooded Beast {^S^^),lntheGripofthe
Spider {W 1 , a remake of Danse Macabre), La Morte
Sorride AH'Assassino (1973). (Others: Five Golden
Dragons. Psycho Circus. Puale of the Red Orchid).

KRAMER, Frank (Real name Gianfranco Parolini).
Kramer has been working in the industry since 1945
and is renowned for his comedic flair and continous
action talent. His major claim to fame is in instigat-
ing the Sabata series of westerns starring Lee Van
Cleef. Goliath against the Giants (1959, screenplay
only). The Fury of Hercules (1960), Samson (1960),
The Old Testament (1961), The Destruction of Her-
culanum (1%2), The Ten Gladiators (1963), Three
Fantastic Supermen (1966), Five for the He// (1968),
UFO Series (1971 ), We are no Angels (1975), God's
Gun (1976), Vef/ (1978).

LADO, Aldo. Director of the infamous Night Train
Murders/Late Night Trains/The Second House on
the Left (1975) which is still banned in this country
due to its extreme view of sexual violence. A sequel
of sorts was made starring Florinda Bolkan called
Terror. In 1972 Lado directed Barbara Bach in a Black
Magic based film called Butterfly of Night and in
1978 directed The Humanoid under the pseudonym
of George B. Lewis.

LEE, Margaret. An English-born actress who was
touted as the new Marilyn Monroe and has
appeared in over 75, largely forgettable, movies.
She married Gino Malerbo and had an affair with
singer Kim Brown until a jail sentence in Morocco
for smuggling marijuana put an end to any aspira-
tions she had abot becoming a serious actress. Fire
Monsters against the Sons of Hercules (1962),
Samson vs. The Pirates (1963), Agent 077 (1966),
Kiss the Girls and make them Die (1966), Secret
Agent Super Dragon (1966), Ghosts-ltalian Style
(1967), Coplan Saves His Skin (1967), Dorian Gray
(1970), Venus in Furs (1970), Cold Blooded Beast
(1971), Night of the Blood Monster (1971).

LENZI, Umberto. (Pseudonym Humphrey Hum-
bert). A bread and butter director who disguises his
evident lack of talent with outrageous storylines that
efficiently pull him through. For proof, see the
ridiculous, but effective Cannibal Ferox (1980), Sam-
son and the Slave Oueen (1963), Temple of the
White Elephants {^%A), The Invincible Masked Rid-
er (1965), Sandokan the Great (1965), Super Seven
Calls the Sphynx (1967), Paranoia (1968, with Carroll
Baker), Spasmo (1976), Deep River Savages (1979),

34

Eaten Alive (1980), Cannibal Ferox (1980), Night-
mare City (1980), The Ironmaster (1982), Daughter
of the Jungle (1982).

MARGHERITA. Antonio. (Pseudonyms: Anthony
Daisies, Anthony Davrsonl. Born Rome 19th
September 1930. Another director in the major
league of early '60s inspirational masters. His early
work always had atmosphere, taste and refinement,
all attributes sadly lacking in his more recent output
but he is a past master at disguising low budgets
often turning this facet to his advantage. Assign-
ment - Outer Space (1960), Battle of the Worlds
(1961), The Golden Arrow (1962), Castle of Blood
(1964 and shot using television techniques). The
Long Hair of Death (1964), Cast/e of Terror (1964),
Hercules Prisoner of Evil (1964), Anthar the Invinci-
ble (1964), Wild Wild Planet (1965), War of the
Planets{^%b), Snow Devils (1965), War between the
Planets (1965), Lightning Blot (1966 and one of the
many spy films Margheriti produced on a 9-14 day
schedule). Agent 007 (1966), La Morte Viene dal
Pianeta Aytin (1967), The Young, the Evil and the
Savage (1968), The Unnaturals (1969), The Bloody
Sorceror (1970), Mr Super-Invisible (1970), In the
Grip of the Spider (1971), Bed of a Thousand
Pleasures (1972), Seven Dead in the Cat's Eyes
(1972), Killer Fish (1978), The Last Jaws (1979), The
Last Hunter (1980), Raiders of the Golden Cobra
(1982), Bermuda Triangle Monsters (1982), The
World of yor(1982). In 1968, Margheriti switched to
producing westerns like Django and in 1978 worked
on the special effects in The Humanoid and likewise
on subsequent films of his own. He is at present
making Final Executor (1983) and an E.T. inspired
film, Spacy in 3D.

MARTINO, Luciano. (Pseudonym: Martin Hardy).
Screenplay writer turned producer and director.
Warrior Empress (1960, produced). Duel of the
Titans (1961, scripted). Night is the Phantom (1963,
scripted). Son of Hercules in the Land of Fire (1963,
scripted). The Demon (1963, scripted). The Invinci-
ble Masked Rider (1965, scripted). The Spy Killers
(1965, produced). The Murder Clinic (1966,
scripted). Erotic Blue (1972, produced). Excite Me
(1972, produced). The Ironmaster produced).
Directed Next! (1971 ). The latter film was produced
by Sergio Martino and as both of their names crop
up together regularly, it is safe to assume they are
related in some way.

MARTINO, Sergio. (Pseudonyms: Christian Plum-
mer, Julian Bary). A good pulp director whose
exciting films make up in exuberance what they lack
in finesse. The Spy Killers (1965, scripted only).
Excite Me (1972), Torso (1975), They're Coming to
get You (1975, filmed in "Chillorama"), Prisoner of
the Cannibal God (1978), The Great Alligator {W9),
Island of Mutations (1979, called Screamers in the
US with added prologue directed by Gary Graver). In
1982 he made a 7 episode, 6'/^ hour longftelevision
mini-series called The Etruscan Enigma that was
also released in a condensed version theatrically.
Also, We Do Our Worst (1982), Don't Play With
Tigers (1982), and 2099:After the Fall of New York
(1983)

MARTINO, Alberto De. (Pseudonym: Martin Her-
bert). An efficient director renowned for being a fast
worker - but not much else. Most of his work has

been for producer Edmondo Amati. Perseus against
the Monsters (1962), The Blancheville Monster
(1953, a PoelPremature Burial rip-off), Hercules vs
the Giant Warriors (1964), Operation Kid Brother/
O.K. Connery (1967, featuring Sean's brother, Neil,
Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell, Adolfo Cell and Daniella
Bianchi), The Antichrist (1974), Holocaust 2000
(1977), Return to Atlantis (1977), Blast of the Second
Galactic Empire (1978), The Invisible Man (1979),
Puma Man (1979)

MASTROCINQUE, Camillo. (Pseudonym: Thomas
Miller) Only included here because he worked with
both Christopher Lee and Barbara Steele, but the
less said about his direction, the better. Crypt of
Horror (1963), An Angel for Satan (1965)

MORRICONE, Ennio. The most prolific composer in
the world with over 8(X) recordings to his name. His
themes for spaghetti-westerns have made him a
legend in his own lifetime - in fact it was John
Carpenter's love of his music for Once Upon A Time
in the West, which he used in his wedding cere-
mony, that earned him the job of composer for The
Thing (1982). His horror/thriller scores have often
added a touch of class to otherwise lacklustre
material. He often works in tandem with Bruno
Nicolai - a composer in his own right - who duals as
his orchestrator and musical director. The Spectre
(1963), The Martians Arrived (1964), Nightmare
Castle/The Faceless Monster (1965), Agent 505
(1966), Operation Kid Brother (1967), Danger: Di-
abolik (1968), A Quiet Place in the Country (1968),
The Red Tent (1969), The Bird with the Crystal
Plumage (1969), Maddalena (1970), When Women
Had Tails (1970), Cat O'Nine Tails (1970), When
Women Lost Their Tales (1971), The Black Belly of
the Tarantula (1971), Four Flies on Grey Velvet
(1971), A Lizard ina Woman's Skin (1971 ), What have
you done to Solange? (1971), The Cannibals (1971 ),
Bluebeard (W2), The Killer {'[972), Slap the Mons-
ter on Page One ( 1 972), T/ie Antichrist (1974), Night

Train Murders (1975), Holocaust 2000 (1977), The
Humanoid (1978), Marco Polo (1982), Treasure of
the Four Crowns (1982)

NKOLODI, Daria. A striking actress who is married
to Dario Argento. She works mainly in the Italian
theatre and her favourite film is surprisingly not one
of her husband's but Mario Bava's Shock (1977)
which, as the central character, gave her the chance
to give full reign to her formidable acting talents.
She met Dario when they were working together on
Deep Red (1975) and subsequently collaborated on
the screenplay of Suspiria (1976) with him. She also
appeared in Inferno (1979), Tenebrae (1982), a
television movie called Portrait of a Veiled Woman
that was released theatrically in the US and more
recently, a television series called The Life of Verdi.
When commitments forced her to relinquish her
role in William Lustig's Maniac (1981), her part was
played by Caroline Munro.

0

ORTOLANI, Riz. A composer who is probably known
for one piece of music above all others - the theme
from Mondo Cane (1961) that became the worl-
dwide bestselling standard "More". Ursus in the
Valley of Lions{‘i%)),Castle of Terror{}%S),Castle
of Blood {)%A), Spy in yourEar{}%b), Ecco (1965),
Lightning Bolt (1^), The Bersagliere's Girl (1966),
The Chastity Belt (1^), In the Grip of the Spider
(1971), Puzzle of the Silver Half Moon (1972), The
Amazons (1973), Cannibal Holocaust (1979), Mad-
house {)m). Zeder

Ursult Andrtss is mtnsctd by unlntndly nstives snd linds htrtsdd Prisoner of the Cinnibtl God in Serjio Msnmo's 197S film

p

^ PETRI, Elio. The director who unleashed on the
world Ursula Andress in a bullet firing bra for his
film The Tenth Wcr/m|1965)which depicted a turgid
and incredible look into the future. He became
increasingly more political in his films and Inves-
tigation of a Citizen above Suspicion won him the
Oscar in 1969. The Assassin (1961), A Quiet Placein
the Country (1968), UVe Still Kill the Old Way (1968),
The ^forking Class Goes to Heaven (1971), Todo
Modo (1976). He died recently.

QUALCOSA STRISOA NEL BUIO. The Italian title for
Mario Colucci's nonsensical spiritualist/whodunnit
saga, Something Creeping in the Dark (1970). The
star of that film, and countless others, was B-movie
veteran Giacomo Rossi-Stuart/Jack Stewart. Other
actors of his nature proliferate like George Eastman/
Luigi Montefiore and Howard Ross/Renato Rossini
but it is in the lower budget area of film making that
Rossi-Stuart always crops up in. He is neither a good
or bad actor but always serves his roles well. Death
Comes From Outer Space ( 1 958), Caltiki the Immor-
tal Monster (1959), Sodom and Gomorrah (1961,
Italian direction by Sergio Leone), The Last Man on
Earth{^%S), WeaponsofVengeance{^%3), Temple
of the White Elephants (1964), War between the
Planets (19651, Snow Devils (1965), Curse of the
Oead(1966l, Perry Grant -Agent of Iron (1966), The
Glass Sphinx (1967), Knives of the Avenger (1967),
Phantom Assassin (1971), The Night She Arose
From The Tomb(1971), LaMorteSorrideAH'Assas-
sino (1973), Weekend Murders (1970), Crimes of the
Black Cat (1972)

RIZZATI, Walter. Composer of the scores for The
House by the Cemetery (1981) and Bronx Warriors
(1982). He is a popular orchestra leader in the James
Last mould who has released numerous easy*
listening albums like Manhattan. Doggybag, The •
Night is Young and Walking on Eggshells. He has
also scored non-genre films like Lo Scoiattolo and
Piemo La Paste Alla Piscossa.

ROSSI, Qiannetto Da. In the special make-up field,
Italy has many leading artists like Maurizio Trani,
Franco Ruffini and Guiseppe Ferranti. Other names
like Carlo Rambaldi and Isidoro Raponi have made
the grade and we are now seeing their names on
big-budgeted Hollywood product. DestinM to join
them it Giannetto De Rossi whose special make-up
effects are often the sole point of interest in the films
at the lower-budgeted end of the market. On set
observers have called his methods ruthlessly per-
fectionist as they cite the incident that occured while
shooting The Beyond. A zombie extra actually had
part of his shoulder blown away due to the close
proximity of a gun prop, but this did not deter De
Rossi from asking the extra if he would do a second

take even though the actor was in agony. Perhaps
that is precisely why his work looks so realistic. The
son of Alberto De Rossi who did make-up on The
Bible (1966) and The Last Valley (1971), Giannetto
De Rossi's main work has been for director Lucio
Fulci. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), When
Women Had Tails (1970), The Living Dead at the
Manchester Morgue (1971), Evil Thoughts (1976),
Fellini Casanova (1977), The Humanoid (1978),
Zombie Flesh-Eaters (1979), City of the Living Dead
(1980), Zombie Horror (1980), Cannibal Apocalypse
(1980), T/)efleyon</(1981), The House by the Cemet-
ery (1981), Piranha 2: Flying Killers (1982). He also
worked uncredited on Inferno (1979) and Con-
tamination (1980) and is not to be confused with
Gino De Rossi who did the make-up for Holocaust
2000(1977)

RUSTKHELU, Carlo. After Ennio Morricone, the
second most prolific composer in Italy whose work
is inseparably linked to the career of Pietro Germi.
He was born in Modena, December 24th 1916 and
has been working in the industry since 1941 after
studying the piano and violincello. Duel before the
Mast (1951), Black 13 (1953), Captain Fantasma
(1953), Death Comes From Outer Space (1958), The
Facts of Murder (1 959), Jason and the Golden Fleece
(1959), Warlord of Crete (1960), The Lost Kingdom
(1961), Queen of the Nile (1961), Psycosissimo
(1961), Romulus and the Sabines (1961), Sword of
the Conqueror (1961), Sons of Thunder (1962),
Triumph of the Son of Hercules (1963), The Giant of
the Lost Tomb (1963), Hercules Attacks (1963), The
Mighty Khan (1963), Night is the Phantom (1963),
Tiger of Terror (1964), Blood and Black Lace (1964,
under the name of Carl Rustic), The Return of
Sandokan Hercules of the Desert The
Mystery of Thug Island (1965), Curse of the Dead
(1966),// Terribilelspettore (19M), Satyricon (1969),
The Odyssey (1971, television score), Assassino sul

Tevere (1980), Throne of Fire (1982), Apocalypse of
an Earthquake (1983)

SACCHETTI, Dardano. A screenplay writer whose
name is always somewhere in the credits of the
major Italian genre releases. Bloodbath (1971), Cat
O'Nine Tails (1971), The Psychic (1976), Shock
(1977), The Last Hunter (1980), City of the Living
Dead (1980), T/ie Beyond (1981), The House by the
Cemetery (1981), Bronx Warriors (1982), Tha New
York Ripper (1982), The Ironmaster (1982), Posses-
sed (1982), Rome 21st Century: Ben Hur vs Sparta-
cus (1983).

SAMPER!, Salvatore. The spearhead director who
filed a lawsuit with Italian television for showing his
films with too many commercial interruptions. His
output consists of visual fantasy gags. Thanks Aunt
Malizia, Ernesto, Scendalo, Venial Sin, Sturmtrup-
pen (1981), Sturmtruppen No 2 (1983) and Here
come the Monsters (19UI, the latter a take-off of the
horror genre containing the characters of Dracula,
the Werewolf, the Mummy, Frankenstein and Nos-
feratu.

SIANI, Sabrina. Also known as just Sabrina. Most
young, ingenue actresses have a short lifespan in
the Italian exploitation industry. Flavours of the
months have included Tisa Farrow, Janet Agren,
Katherine McColl and Clio Goldsmith. The latest to
join these ranks is Siani who has made more films in
the last few years than most actresses can claim in a
lifetime. Cannibal World (1980), Ator the Fighting
f8g/e)1982). Tiger Man [1962], Sword of the Barba-
rians [1962], Conguesf (1982), Throne of Fire {^B82),

36

Blue Island (1982), Sahara Gold (19821, Daughter of
the Jungle {1982).

STEELE, Barbara. The English actress who became
the Queen of Horror by default than design. "I began
with too many horror films," she is quoted as
saying, "I hate graves and ail those things", and
even though she has hardly seen any of the films
listed, her presence in any film gave it a quality that
is indefinably her own. The 39 Steps (1959), Sap-
phira {198/8), Revenge of the Vampire {I960), ThePit
and the Pendulum {1961), The Terror of Dr Hitchcock
(1962), The Spectre (19631, 8’/i (1962), The Iron
Captain (1963), Castle of Blood {196k), TheLongHair
of Death (1964), Terror Creatures from the Grave
(1965), The Faceless Monster (1965), An Angel for
Satan {1966), L'Armata Bracaleone (1965), Revenge
of the Bloodbeast {1%6), Curse of the Crimson Altar
(1968), Caged Heat (1974), Shivers (1976), Piranha
(1979), The Silent Scream (1980). An interesting
abandoned project in 1965 was the teaming of
Steele and Christopher Lee for Lady Diabolika.

STENO, Stefano. Usually only known by his sur-
name. A director who has been working since 1940
and who primarily makes comic spoofs - in the ’60s
these were always with the famous comedy duo
Franco and Ciccio. Uncle was a Vampire (1959),
Psycosissimo (1961), O.K. Nero (1961), A Monster
and a Half {196k), The Superdiabolical {1%6), Dorel-
lik (1967), The Cavalier with the Red Nose (1967),
Transplant (1970), Dr Jekyll E Gentile Signora
(1980), Ideal Adventure (1982), Banana Joe (1982),
Don Celeste (1982). Steno's son, Carlo Vanzina, is
now working in the giallo field.

TESSARI, Ducio. Born Genoa, 11 October, 1926. A
director who started out as a cameraman and
documentary filmmaker whose major claim to fame
is his influential political spaghetti westerns like the
Ringo series. Wrote Colossus of Rhodes (1960),
Colossus and the .kmazons (1960), Hercules Con-
quers Atlantis (1961), Duel of the Titans (1961),
Goliath and the Vampires (1961), The Last Days of
Pompeii (1959). Directed Sons of Thunder (1961),
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (1965), an Arabian Nights
fantasy called For Love. . .For Magic (1966), and
Man Without a Memory {19T6)-lheon\y Italian film
to feature a chainsaw.

UL TIMA PREDA DEL VAMPIROL'. The Italian title for
Piero Regnoli's The Playgirls and the Vampire
(1960) which introduced Walter Brandi (Walter
Brandt) to the genre who was to specialise in
vampire films for a while. The film had a sequel,
Renato Polselli's The Vampire and the Ballerina
(1961) but Brandi's most serious bid for considera-
tion is Roberto Mauri's Slaughter of the Vampires
(1962). He also starred with Barbara Steele in Terror
Creatures from the Grave (1965) and Bloody Pit of
Horror’(1965),the latter directed by Massimo Pupillo
who also produced Brandi’s films under the
pseudonyms of Max Hunter and Ralph Zucker as
well as others like The Devil's Wedding Night (1973).
Brandi co-produced the 1968 film Eve the Savage
Venus.

VALU, AUda. A striking actress born in 1921 under
the real name of Alida Maria Altenburger. She
returned to Italian films in 1947 after a Hollywood
career where she was known simply as Valli. One of
her greatest films is Visconti's Senso (1955). Her
horror films have rarely used her to such good
effect. Death Travels Too Much ( 1 965), Oedipus Rex
(1967), Blood{19T1), The Devil and the Dead {1912),
House of Exorcism (1973), It's Nothing Mummy,
Only A Game (1973), The Antichrist {191k), Tender
Dracula (1974), Suspiria (1976), Inferno (1979).

WEEKEND MURDERS. Michele Lupo's “Ten Little
Niggers" whodunnit from 1970 that had the pecu-
liarity of being set in England. Anna Moffo and
Lance Percival (!) were the stars and it proved, along
with Jorge Grau’s The Living Dead at the Manches-
ter Morgue (1974), that the English ambience de-
finitely did not match the Italian sensibility. Far more
successful are those Italian films that have American
location work.

X CERTIFICATE. Most Italian horror films are severe-
ly cut and all are given X (181 certificates. Not
commonly known is that the films in their country of
origin often have very heavy censorship problems
as well. The following list comprises the titles that
have given the British censors most headaches. Still
banned outright are: The Insatiables (1970) pur-
portedly because it contained the most savage
beating up scene every committed to film, 99
Women (1969) because of excruciating torture and
mutiliation depicted as happening in a women's
prison. Deep Red (1975) due to the stylised violence
and Night Train Murders (1975) as it features ex-
treme sexual violence. Badly cut were: Revenge of
the Vampire {I960), eventually released in 1968 with
most of the prologue excised, Mondo Cane (1961)
although it was shown by local authorities. Blood-
bath (1971 ) which lost over ten minutes when it was

eventually released in the UK years later. Savage
Man, Savage Beast (1976) which lost a lot of the
grosser documentary footage. Crimes of the Black
Cat (1972) because it took a Hitchcockian shower
scene to the limits, and Pasolini's infamous Salo
(1977) due to its degradation, both human and
sexual. All the horror greats have suffered in the
censorship respect and it certainly isn't getting any
better.

y

YOR, The World of (1982). The film that Columbia
have put a massive publicity campaign behind in
America. Margheriti’s film doesn't deserve it butthis
action looks set to open the floodgates for the rash
of similar films now taking over the Italian market
place. Like Thor (1982) by Tonio Ricci, She (1982)
starring Sandahl Bergman with music by Rick Wake-
man and Justin Hayward, both Ator's (1982), Gunan
the Invincible/ Sword of the Barbarians (1982), Su-
perHuman (1982), Zeus Against the Universe (1982)
starring Gordon Mitchell as Kronos, The Lost City
(1982), Adam and Eve (1982), The Throne of Fire
(1982), The Crystal Sword (1982), Barbarians 2000
(1983), Warrior of the Lost World (1983), Attica
(1983), 2020: Texas Gladiators (1983), Master of the
World (1983), Rome 21st Century: Ben Hur vs
Spartacus (1983)

ZOMBIES. Or 777m judging by the Starburst
letters column regarding this staple of the Italian
film industry. But for the first lime, a complete list of
all the Italian films to have featured zombies or the
living dead. Rome vs Rome/War of the Zombies
(1963), Terror Creatures from the Grave (1965),
Kingdom in the Sand (1965), II Dio Serpente (1970),
The Orgy of the Dead {1911), The Living Dead at the
Manchester Morgue (1974), Leonor (1974), Zom-
bies: Dawn of the Dead (1978), Zombie Holocaust
(1979, parts of which became Dr Butcher M.D.)
Island of the Zombies (1979), Zombie Flesheaters
(1979), City of the Living Dead (1980), Sexy Erotic
Love/ Exotic Love (1980), Zombie Creeping Flesh
(1980), Nightmare City (1980), Zombie Horror
(1980), The Beyond {19^), TheHousebytheCemet-
ery {1981), Zombie 3D {1983) U

37

Continued from Page 7

Tony Crtjwley's

Oh Brother!

John Hurt, young Suuana Hamilton
and Cyril Cusack started shooting 1984
- as Winston, Julia and Charrington -
on April 2. Thefilm's real talker, howev-
er, was not announced until the day
before the rain invaded Cannes six
weeks later. I gather many fine actors
had been called but, obviously, in the
end, one only could be chosen as
O'Brien, the relentless interrogator of
poor Winston Smith. And I have to say
my interest in the movie has waned
considerably since hearing Richard
Burton is O'Brien. Oh dear, dear,
dear. . . !

Granted, the role demands an actor
who can handle long speeches.
Granted, director Michael Radford can
cut from the Burton visage (if not the
voice) to John Hurt's perfectly rav-
aged-looking Winston. Granted, it's a
plum role and an old pro is hardly
going to muck it up. Even so, I can't
stand Burton in films. I'd rather see an
Edy Williams monstrosity than watch
the over-theatrical Burton. Anyway,
now the cast is more top-heavy than
the number of producers of this film
(four!). I mean, can you imagine Burton
playing second fiddle to Big
Brother. . ?

CheekySwine!

Mark Sobel's computerology thriller,
Access Code with Martin Landau, had
the hype-line "We're Watching You"
on its ads, until the day after the Burton
news. Then, what do you know, the
hype read: Big Brother is Watching
You. Burton must still have some im-
pact, after all.

Meanwhile. . .

. . . back in the real world, good news
and bad. First, young Hollywood comic
Andy Kaufman, star of the badly - if
ever - released Allan Arkush film,
Heartbeeps, died of lung cancer
(though he was no smoker) on May
16. . . Three days later, Michael Powell,
79, director of Peeping Tom (I960)
among other British classics, married
his pal Martin Scorsese's editor Thel-
ma Schoonmaker in Britain.

Off and Running

The good news from the Swedish VTC
video folk is that Roger Christian was
all systems go to start 2084 (see Star
burst 69 interview) down-under on
July 25. Set, as the VTC release didn't
really need to point out "a hundred
years in the future" (no, really?), Ro-

ger's movie studies an Orwellian world
in the desert planet of Odessa, control-
led by unscrupulous mercenary Jowitt.
Our hero tackling him is Lorca, aided by
Kid, a more human than mechanical-
ised droid. Roger, who knows a thing
or two about sets (hence his Star Wars
Oscar) is shooting around Sydney and
in Western Australian mining areas -
"some of the most staggering loca-
tions imaginable, you'll really have the
feel of having gone to another planet."

Roger's producer on the project is
Michael Guest, previously concerned
with Skolimowski's Moonlighting and
Tony Richardson's Hotel New Hamp-
shire.

Cannes Chatter

Sam Raimi was missing for the first
time in two years. With reason. He's
begun Evil Dead II, aka Evil Dead and
The Army of Darkness. Bruce Camp-
bell stars. Well, he was the survivor. . .
Stephen Woolley, I understand, has
bought it already for Palace, win, lose
or draw that damned video-nasty cast
about Evil Dead. Steve's also picked up
Blood Simple from Sam's Big Apple
mates. . . Wolfgang Peterson, director
of The Boat and The Never Ending
Story (photo-preview real soon, that's
a promise) has taken over making the
big Fox sf film. Enemy Mine, from
original director Richard Loncraine af-
ter, yeah, yeah, the usual "creative
differences". Cast stays firm: Dennis.
Uaws 11/Right Stuff\ Quaid and Oscar-
winner Lou Gossett. . . Glenn Robin-
son, veteran Hollywood SPFXer, sup-
plied the monsters for Herman Car-
denes' Island Claw. Better if he'd pro-
vided the actors, too. . . Italy's top sf
comic-strip, RanXerox, by Liberators
and Tamburini, definitely moving as a
movie now with director Andrzej Zula-
waski, the Pole who made Possession
with a Carlo Rambaldi thingie (no,
Mandy, I don't mean Isabel Adjani) and
this year's scandale hit. The Public
Woman. Or pubic. . . Anything Eduard
Sarlui can muck up. Cannon can do
better? They're re-making H. Rider
Haggard too. King Solomon's Mines,
with Richard Chamberlain in Stewart
Granger's 1950 re-make role. Sorry,
but like Mel Gibson's The Bounty, a
thrice-told tale is once two often. . .
While Nastassja Kinski recovers great
form in three newies debuting at Can-
nes, her dad is back with the low
budgeteers in Titan Find, William
Malone's mix of Alien and Space Vam-
pires (which, come to think of it, Klaus
Kinski was billed to star in some years
ago)... Dan O'Bannon has scripted
Blade Runner author Philip K. Dick's
Screamers for producer Chuck Fries. . .
David Cronenberg to make Total Recall
lor Dino De Dune. . . Caroline Munro
writhes again in Derek Ford's horror,
Don't Open Until Christmas, co-
starring and directed by actor Edmund
Purdom. Didn't even know he was still
alive, let alone around. . . One outfit

named, or initialled FCI, Cannes- prove to be Eduard Sarlui and Con-
screened all their cans, stuff with real tinental Motion Pictures, which peddle
turn-on titles like The Ark of the Sur) more genre tit 'n' tat than even Cannon
God (with David Warbeck, who else?) used to wallow in five years ago. For
Violated, Assassination and ...Enid example, I finally caught their She film
Blyton's The Famous Five! this trip. It's not so much H. Rider

Haggard anymore. Simply haggard!
Santa's Litttle Helpers The classic old yarn of Ayesha, She

Who Must Be Obeyed, even as simpli-
London producer Timothy Burnll men- f,gjj Hammer's odes to Ursula
tioned he had his own plane at Cannes Andress {sigh!) and the wondrous
this year. Not at Nice airport to assist Czech-mate, Olinka Berova (deep
any necessary speedy return to Pine-
wood. He meant a plane carrying his
name on a huge banner- one of the by
now annual Salkind air-force sweeping
above the Croisette in lunchtime sor-
ties to make sure none of us forget that
the next Salkind endeavour is Santa
Claus. At $50 million, it's going to be
the most expensive Christmas gift of
1985.

Shooting of effects, tests and
allegedly "certain key scenes" for the
movie b^an as long ago as last Christ-
mas and another Salkind air-force,
choppers this time, are due around the
North Pole shortly to collect back-
ground plates for the ongoing SPFX
work at Pinewood. (Yes, Pinewood!

Forget all those headlined complaints
that Thatcher's boys have made it im-
possible for the Salkinds to stay in
production in Britain. "We'll never quit
Pinewood," says Alexander Salkind.

For some time, of course, we've
known that Dudley Moore has been
signed for the film. He's played Santa's
No 1 elf. Patch, for a cool five million
bucks. At Cannes, the news broke that
the Supergirl ditecxot, Jeannot Szwarc,
will handle the new project. "This is the
subject I've been waiting for all my
life," he said; as you'd expect him to
say. "I think the magic of the myth will
touch the hearts of people the world
over and bring out the child in every
one of us."

Alex Salkind describes Santa as "a
relief from our super films." Not that
they've finished with them. With a
sweet smile of success, he added, "We
can always return to Superman IV or a
new Supergirl, or even Son of Santa
Claus - but after Santa Claus."

So who's playing Santa? Not Chris
Reeve in a white beard, that's for sure.

He made that clear during his quick flip
over for The Bostonians film which
closed the Director's Fortnight. He's
not interested in SupermartlV, either.

Anyway, Chris is not old enough for the
role. "Although this is telling of the
universal fairy tale," comments Alex
Salkind, "Santa himself, will not be that
old. He starts the film at a mere 45,
although he ages somewhat in the
course of the story," I bet.

When you come down to it, there's
one man only for the role. It'd be
typecasting, of course. But who better
to play Santa than San^ himself.

George Lucas.

Exit: She

Not so sure about Jeff's backers. They

sigh!), is wholly unrecognisable here, to be the only one on the set who either
It's all switched into a post-apocalyptic believes in the project or is simply
situation. But never switched on. The professional enough to act as if she
result is ab-so-lutely farcical! The does. She, alone, though, cannot save
sound you're hearing is poor Rider this infantile travesty directed by the
Haggard spinning in his tomb. . . scenarist Avi Nesher. He should be
In the title role, Sandahl Berman - roped to a chair and made to watch his
Conan's ex-Valeria - gives her not film non-stop on a bank of monitors for
inconsiderable all, I must say. She wins a month and then be handed over to
The Things Medallion for performing the men in white coats. He's packed the
heroically over and beyond the call of mess with people like Harrison (hah!)
duty or, I suspect, booty. She appears Muller, star of the same combine's

2020 Texas Gladiators. I got the im-
pression that the cast - men and
women both - were American football
players, too punchy to turn out last
season. The added fact that the
movie's score comes from The Bastard
Group tends to sum up this enterprise.

If they'd penned some songs, it'd make
a great panto.

Conan with a Gun

The Big C for Conan has turned into a
seemingly indestructible bigger C for
cyborg. That's Arnold Schwarzeneg-
ger's new role in Terminator, written
by producer Gale Hurd and director
James Cameron. Arnie's cyborg is sent
to Earth now from the future to termi-
nate poor Linda Hamilton, as if she
hasn't suffered enough in Children of
the Corn. Why the hit? Sometime in her
own future, Linda will have a son who
will, in his future, lead the human
residue from the next atomic war
against a computer-controlled
machine army that sees the human
race as being obsolete. If they can get
his Mama before he's born, all be well.
For them!

Fear not lor Linda. She's body-
guarded by another time-tripper,
Michael Biehn, sent back in time to
drop a wrench in the cyborg's mission.
Or in the cyborg, itself. Okay, so
seconds out - in the blue corner, future
man - in the red corner, future robot.
May the best machine win!

Stunts Galore

The day the 37th Cannes festival
closed, Indiana Jones and The Temple
of Doom opened in America and went
through the roof - naturally. Censor-
hassled in Britain or not, it's chockful of
terrifying stunts. "Hardest one of all,"
says Harrison Ford, "was keeping the
hat on. They used carpet tacks!" I know
well when the film opened because I
was - eat your hearts out - stuck on a
Cannes beach in the finally returning
sun because a rail strike delayed my
return to Paris by a day . M likely story -
Ed.) I returned, I might add in true Indy
style. My suit-case, stuffed to bursting
point with Cannes documentation.
Press kits, photos, notes, tapes, slipped
my grasp and tumbled dink-donk-
dunk! down a Paris escalator and ex-
ploded Press kits, photos, notes and
tapes like acid rain. . . So I think this
month's column is as accurate as
usual. I

Above: Conan meets Mad Wax! The publicity art for a new Sandhel Bergman vehicle, based
very loosely, on H. Rider Haggard's classic novel, and featuring music by The Bastard Croup!
Below: Willie Scott and Short Round fall through the floor of a rope bndge as takings for
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom rocket through the roof!

Above : Th9 mam charactars o<Star T rek III - The Search for Spock pose for the camera, without director/ title star Leonard
Ntmoy. Below: Saavik (this time played by Robm Curtis) and two interpnse crew members view the scanner.

STAR TREK III-
THESEARCHFOR
SPOCK

"There are no surprises
on this journey to the
final frontier".

A Starburst Film Review
by Alan Jones

T hey find him! Right, now that's
out of the way it's down to the
business of explaining exactly
why this sequel to The Wrath of Khan
is such a disappointment.

Any film structured around the
absense of one of its major characters
is bound to suffer dramatically. Add
that to the fact that Leonard Nimoy is in
the director's chair this time out and its
failure is easy to understand. Star Trek
III is so solemn and reverent concern-
ing the Spock persona to the detriment
of its other fine merits. This self-
evident empathy, leaves a lot to be
desired and- becomes pretentious,
although I must admit that the TV show
philosophy does come over stronger
here than in the two previous outings.
Star Trek III is nothing more than a lot
of character studies revolving around
the qualities of friendship and commit-
ment.

Sorry 'Trekkers" but you need a lot
more than that to make a film work in
the 1980s.

Taking its premise from the first
show of the third television series,
Spock's Brain. Star Trek III starts well
with a recap of the Vulcan's final mo-
ments on board the Enterprise. But its
prime concerns are mainly stopping
Klingon warlord Kruge take posses-
sion of the Genesis project which he
views as the ultimate secret weapon
and the transference of Spock's know-
ledge from Bones' mind into the rapid-
ly ageing Vulcan body due to the pro-
ject being a disaster.

There are no real surprises along this
journey to the final frontier. One con-
cerning Kirk's son is thrown away,
victim of the over funereal tone per-
meating every second of the film. The
major talking point though. I suspect,
will be the fate of the Starship Enter-
prise which will probably send ardent
fans into paroxysms of rage as it is put
to rest to make way for the Excelsior in
Part 4.

Star Trek IITs major trump card is
once again the superb craftsmanship
of the ILM special effects. After the very
rough matte and model work on show
in Indiana Jones, they emerge here

back on top form. In these days of over
familiarity with anything even remote-
ly cinematically space-age, the visual
treats here supply the wonderment
and emotional charge missing from
the script. The Klingon battleship ema-
nating from behind its cloak of dark-
ness or the docking of the Enterprise in
a future-tech Earthport are feats of
amazing virtuosity - all well show-
cased by another fine score by James

Horner. These are the true jewels in the
somewhat tarnished crown.

There is no getting away from it
though. Star Trek II is downright
ponderous at times with evident cut-
ting to speed up the relatively short
running time. It also lacks a full
blooded villain in the mould of Khan
and is sadly predictable from start to
finish. Did anyone ever really doubt
that the search for Spock would end

anything lesss than happily? Lum-
bered with a pseudo-mystical ending
and a devastating last line, why
couldn't anyone see the sense in mak-
ing Spock's resurrection just a part of
this pulp entertainment and not the
sum total?

As Nichelle Nichols says at one point
though, "This isn't real. This is just a
fantasy". I actually wondered about
that this time round I'm afraid. ■

40

ROMANCING

THESTONE

“Anyone who enjoyed
Raiders of the Lost Ark will
get a big kick out of this
too."

A Starburst Film Review
by Alan Jones

W hile Romancing the Stone is
thematic fantasy rather than
being an all-out genre film by
definition, I'm sure I'm going to get
slagged off for reviewing it within
these pages. But honestly, anyone who
liked Raiders of the Lost Ark will get a
big kick out of this movie, too.

Romancing the Stone has a lighter
touch than Raiders but it is just as
romantic and jam packed full of unex-
pected twists and turns.

When a Barbara Cartland type novel-
ist, played by Kathleen Turner of Body
Heat fame, receives a treasure map
through the post, it is just ahead of a
phone call telling her that her kidnap-
ped sister will die unless she delivers it
personally to Colombia. Staggering in

high heels through the jungle after one
of the many attempts on her life, she
meets Michael Douglas who looks set
to transform her life into something
along the lines of a plot from one of her
own novels.

From an unwilling helper he becom-
es enamoured with the fabulous emer-
ald that lies at the end of the treasure
hunt and both decide to use this bounty
to their advantage. This is, of course,
only the beginning of their problems
but director Robert Zemeckis, another
alumnus of Mr Spielberg, keeps the
whole convoluted plot moving along at
such breakneck speed that you don't
have a momentto relax and notice how
ridiculous it all is. Full of wit and
intelligence, (some would say, "How
on earth did it ever get made?"),
Romancing the Stone is the best kind of
escapist fun with special effects occur-
ing always when you are least expect-
ing them.

Writer Diane Thomas reportedly got
'k million dollars for her screenplay
and, while I'm sure some of the quirki-
ness in the final product must bear
Zemeckis' trademark, she deserves ev-
ery penny for crafting a motion picture
totally devoid of cliche which one can
only term truly unusual. ■

SUPERGIRL

“Sounding the
death-knell for this
money-spinning comic
book series."

A Starburst Film Review
by Alan Jones

I s it a bird? Yes, as it happens, it is!
Supergirl is a turkey of such epic
proportions, I feel like leaving this
review at that and not wasting my time
or yours by going on further. But the
stunning wrong-headed banality of
this latest Salkind offering is going to
sound the death knell for this money-
spinning comic book series. So fasten

your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy
flight - almost as bad as the visibly
wired ones poor old Helen Slater as
Supergirl is put through.

No other mega-budget movie in re-
cent memory has so much stacked
against it from the start. The tiresome
plot, such as K is, is a thinly veiled
re-working of Snow White pitting Argo
City's answer to The Flying Nun
against a second rate fortune-teller lor
the undying affections of a hunky land-
scape gardener. I kid you not! Sor-
ceress Selena's power comes from a
stray Omegahedron that Supergirl has
to recover to save her hometown from
destruction.

While remaining remarkably faithful
to the true genesis of Clark Kent's long
lost cousin. Supergirl is doomed by a
humourless script from David {The

Dark Orystah Odell. All told, it's a
charmless exercise riddled with illogic-
al motivation and very sloppy story-
telling. Treated as high camp. Super-
girl may just manage to pass muster.
But it never really goes over the top
enough to warrant that description.

Then there's the actor factor! Never
have so many been wasted by so little. I
make no apologies forthefollowing list
of character assassinations: Peter
OToole hams it up outrageously as
Zaltar, the leader responsible for turn-
ing Argo City into, well. . . an Argos
discount showroom, just by waving his
silly Matterwand, starting all the trou-
ble in the first place. At least John
Gielgud waited until he was an old-
aged pensioner before appearing in
throwaway cameo roles. Faye Dun-
away is all tepid fire and brimstone as
Selena, a role which could well chal-
lenge Mommie Dearest as the nadir of
her career - if that seems at all possi-
ble. As her sidekick Bianca, Brenda
Vaccaro indulges in some wise cracks
so unfunny, she would have been wis-
er not to have cracked them at all. Hart
Bochner is the focus of all this needless
female attention and he is saddled with
some impossible pseudo-
Shakespearean lines. It isn't really his
fault that he emerges as a right wally.
And as for Helen Slater, the less said
the bener, as she struggles in a
vacuum, looking like a fresh-faced
Catherine Deneuve in her Kara/Super-
girl part and a Kate Nelligan look-a-like
when she adopts her earthly persona
of Linda Lee. (Rumour has it, she was
dubbed as well). Mia Farrow and
Simon Ward scarcely have two lines
between them as Supergirl's parents.

But the worst miscalculation of all
comes from Peter Cook as Selena's
former henchman. Embarrassing isn't
the word! Watching him, once again,
trying to break into the American Mar-
ket in an effort to follow his former
partner's footsteps has all the charm of
viewing a cancer operation.

With a strong directorial hand be-
hind Supergirl, some of its twee inten-
tions might have been salvaged. But it
looks like Jeannot Szwarc has been
predictably overwhelmed by the finan-
cially controlling side of the produc-
tion. It is his most anonymous film to
date.

The tacky studio bound sets are
matched well by the grainy unconvinc-
ing special effects which look like lef-
tovers from every imaginative film in
this post Star Wars era. Apart from the
visible wires every time a flying stunt
occurs (Zoran Perisic - where are you
now?), Roy Field and Derek Meddings'
work has a tired, uninvolved feel about
it. The climactic appearance of a gigan-
tic hellish demon (looking suspiciously
like the Rancor Monster in Return of the
Jedi] only confirms my theory that
meshing the occult with Superpower
mythology is a marriage destined for
the rocks.

I could go on. But by now I think
you've got the point. Warner Brothers
wisely passed on releasing this film
worldwide for reasons that are now
only too apparent. I must admit word
had filtered back through the
grapevine about how bad Supergirl
supposedly was. But not only did Su-
pergirl confirm my worst expectations
- its exceeded them to a degree I
thought would never be possible. ■

41

I n an effort to keep all you glaze-
eyed video viewers glued to this
column, occasionally I try to find
novel and different ways to “break up*
the text - ie, rather than just a mixed
bag of reviews I cover, say, all available
videos which feature scenes in which
Sybil Danning undresses. Or videos in
which John Carradine undresses.

Anyway, here's our latest innova-
tion : The entire genre output land then
some!) of just one company- and what
better company to start with than that
Godsend to genre fans - Videomedia?

KEEPINGGOOD

COMPANY

Now, any company that can boast
Polanski's Repulsion and Cul-De-Sac,
Argento's Bird With The Crystal Plum-
age and Tenebrae and Bava's Black
Sunday can fairly be said to be playing
a good hand. And if I don't elaborate on
the virtues of these excellent movies in
this article, it's only because I've done
so on previous occasions. (I'll just re-
mind you that Repulsion is, along with
Psycho and Peeping Tom, the cine-
ma's most subtle, sharply observed
and terrifying portrait of a dangerously
disordered mind, and quite possibly
Polanski's most rivetting film.)

The Argentos, of course, will be
familiar to Starburst readers and need
no recommendation here (one reader
took me to task for saying that Suspiria
deserved the description of Argento's
finest film, claiming Tenebrae as such
- but you can make up your own
minds!).

Other goodies in the Videomedia
bag include (while still on the subject of
Italian terror) Riccardo Freda's Terror
ofDrHichcock (that's Freda's spelling)
with the incandescent Barbara Steele -
also to be seen, of course, in the same
company's Black Sunday. Freda's film
is visually hypnotic, if a little uneventful
for modern tastes (particularly in this
shortened version). There's also an
oddity called Cemetery of the Living
Dead which together with Sewell's
Curse of the Crimson Altar completes a
quartet of Barbara Steele chillers. This
turns out to be a black-and-white film
by Massimo Pupillo called Cinque
Tombe Per Un Medium and has a
certain stylistic strikingness - but is
otherwise unremarkable.

A very interesting item is A Study in
Terror, James Hill's gripping account
of an apocryphal clash between Sher-
lock Holmes and Jack the Ripper. Yes,
it's the same theme as the later Murder
By Decree, but here handled with more
grisly panache (if less political sophis-
tication). John Neville makes a virile
and youthful Holmes, with Donald
Houston a solid Watson.

Fulci's House By the Cemetery is, of
course, one for admirers of this con-
troversial director - not among his
most audacious efforts, but well up to
par - if you can take it!

Eugene Martin you may know from

Tape Reviews by
Barry Forshaw

The furry features of Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca the wookie as he appears in SPFX: The
Empire Strikes Back ICBS/Fox).

WE KID YOU NOT!

etch this information
on your brain
and you 'll never hire a
naff video again!

HITS PITS

1. SPFX: The Empire Strikes Back 1. The Next One (FUmtown)

ICBS/Fox) 2. Wavelength (Medusa)

2. War of the Worlds ICIC) 3. Invaders of the Lost Gold (A 1)

3. The Brood (Intervision) 4. The Loch Ness Horror

4. Dark Night of the Scarecrow (Videoform)

I Video Unlimited) 5. Castle of Evil

5. Zardoz ICBS/Fox) (Videoform)

his pseudonymous effort as director,
Horror Express, a lively horror comic
not matched by his Videomedia re-
lease, A Candle For the Devil -a Judy
Geeson starrer about sexual repres-
sion which never really takes off. Ditto
Curse of the Crimson Altar (director
Vernon Sewell) despite the presence of
Barbara Steele. Things look up with
Fulci's imaginative The Beyond and an
entry in Videomedia's Spectacular
series, the epic Ulysses (director Mario
Camerini) with Kirk Douglas excellent
as ever in a vivid, colourful re-telling of
Homer. High marks also for The Creep-
ing Flesh (with Cushing and Lee) -
Freddie Francis at his macabre best in a
genuinely chilling effort. Lee appears
in Mastrocinque's Crypt of Horror, a
black-and-white chiller not connected
(despite its title) with the 50s comics.
And a final mention of Norman J.
Warren's Prey, with its lively shape-
shifting alien. Videomedia, of course,
carry many other excellent main-
stream titles - better stocked video
stores will carry these.

GOINGUPI

Now, three from Warner Bros that can
be safely recommended. First, the
Dutch techno-thriller The Lift directed
by Dick Maas. As has been observed,
this comes across as a cinema version
of one of Stephen King's tales in which
an inanimate object begins decimating
human beings. Here, the malevolent
liftof the title is brilliantly characterised
as a playfully murderous intelligence
that only a dogged lift engineer sent to
service it (after the near-suffocation of
some drunken guests) can finally con-
front.

From the very first shot of the sinister
device of the title, as it heaves into
sight, irradiated with very Argento-like
hues, it's clear that Maas is a stylist -
and he's largely able to keep usgripped
throughout, with the exception of
some slack sections midway through
the film. As a bonus, some attention is
given to fleshing out his working class
hero, whose marriage collapses under
the strain of his growing obsession
with the increasing body count of the
eponymous killer.

There's some fashionable conspira-
cy theory tactics woven into the plot,
but I'll add no more other than to
commend The Lift to you - it's a
refreshingly sharp piece of work, the
occasional flat moment (and usual in-
adequate dubbing) notwithstanding.

KILLERDILLER

The second Warner Bros winner is
Angel of Vengeance (known in the
States as Ms 45), and it's a real find - a
kind of distaff Death Wish made with
both style and visual imagination, and
starring Zoe Tamerlis as a mute girl
who repays violent assault with hand-
gun retribution - a retribution that
eventually threatens to engulf any
male who crosses her path.

42

M$ Tamerlis has a Nastassja Kinski-
like limpid beauty, and the intensity of
her performance matches that of
Catherine Deneuve's in Polanski's Re-
pulsion (another clear model for this
film, with a similar portrait of a dis-
turbed girt slipping further and further
into psychosis through the unwanted
attentions of men.)

Watching the implacable heroine of
Abel Ferrara's harrowing movie deci-
mate the uniformly unpleasant male
characters she encounters has a cu-
rious significance for the male viewer -
the effect is sobering and thought pro-
voking in a way that male-hating
feminist tracts by women often aren't.
Too often, it's easy to rationalise the
impulses behind the latter, but when
male film-makers paint such a dispirit-
ing portrait of their own sex, such
conclusions are less straightforward.

It's also to Ferrara's credit that, unlike
much feminist fiction (in which the
men are invariably as obnoxious as in
Angel of Vengeance but the women
usually ennobled by their conscious-
ness-raising suffering), the director is
here able to criticize his heroine's ac-
tions - as in the scene where a relative-
ly innocent young male Chinese is
about to be gunned down for kissing
his girlfriend.

Ferrara has made a quantum leap in
directorial technique since the shoddy
Ony/er/T/y/er (which I criticize, of course,
as a bad movie, rather than from the
moral majority standpoint) and pro-
duced a tense and fully achieved
thriller.

TAUTTHRILLER

And thirdly: To the list of young direc-
tors whose style is heavily influenced
by the late and lamented Alfred Hitch-
ed (most successful of whom is Brian
Oe Palma) can now be added the name
of the talented Jonathan Demme. The
third of Warner Bros' recent batch of
fine movies is his Last Embrace, a
powerful thriller that combines ele-
ments of the Master's three greatest
movies. Vertigo, Psycho and North by
Northwest.

Roy Scheider is excellent as an in-
telligence agent coming apart at the
seams (like James Stewart's character
in Vertigo) and who becomes involved
in a murky, convoluted plot involving
the murder of several apparently unre-
lated individuals. Janet Margolin is the
girl who may not be all she appears to
be, and Scheider's existence is
threatened in several virtuoso sus-
pense set pieces (a vertiginous bell-
tower sequence - inspired by guess
what movie? - and a nail-biting climax
at Niagara Falls.) Demme acquits him-
self admirably as a disciple of Britain's
greatest director, and the occasional
lapse in logic is more than forgiveable
- particularly as Miklos Rozsa's lush,
dramatic score keeps all the elements
tightly together.

CULTCOME-ON

Don't be tempted by the "Come-on"
packaging and title of Massacre at
Central High (Merlin) - it's by no means
as pacily violent as the advertising
copy intimates, and - more germane to
readers of this magazine - the horror
elements are minimal. A routine tale of
a quiet Shane-Wke student who ulti-
mately decimates the college ‘Little
Gestapo*, it passes the time undeman-
dingly enough till the final reel. Then,
with almost stupefying unreality every
put-upon student in the college trans-
forms, Jekyll and Myde-style into car-
bon copies of their bullying oppressors
- and all is resolved in an even more
credibility-shattering orgy of death.
But you'll be totally bemused by then.
The director is Renee Daalder - and I
should point out that this film has been
included in the new book Cult Movies 2
(as has Angel of Vengeance, reviewed
earlier).

FROGGINGADEAD

HORSE

The first major appearance of the ‘Re-
venge of Nature' ideas was. of course,
Hitchcock's The Birds', in George
McGowan's Frogs (Guild) it isn't, sur-
prisingly enough, the title creatures
that wreak havoc (except for the death
of unsympathetic tycoon Ray Milland),
but various denizens of the reptile
kingdom. This is probably because

McGowan (unlike the hapless makers
of the appalling Night of the Lepus,
with their giant bunnies) realised that
frogs are just not sinister (think of that
Quartz ad!), while snakes, etc. . .

Efficiently made ecological horror
thriller.

ANDERSONAGAIN

Michael Anderson's track record in
directing genre films (the dull Logan's
Run, the woeful Doc Savage) didn't
inspire high hopes for Dominique
(Guild) - and, regrettably, one's worst
fears are realised. A mechanically-
crafted Diaboliques rip-off (not, for
once, scripted by Jimmy Sangsterl),
Gliff Robertson and Jean Simmons
play out the usual ‘let's drive wife/
husband mad' shenanigans without
conviction. Despite all its miscalcula-
tion with Hackman's camp Luthor, one
is still glad Anderson cried off directing
Superman)

NEWANDFORTHCOMING

The SF epic Metalstorm appears from
Entertainment in Video and Jack
Arnold's classic Creature from the
Black Lagoon from GIG. From Rank,
The Last Child and from Thorn EMI;
Amityville III and Rotweiler: The Dogs
of Hell. Brent Walker Video has the
lively House that Dripped Blood, and
Videoform has Gottafavi's cult movie
Hercules Conquers Atlantis. But the
real events are from RGA : Spacehunter
and Christine.

BRIEFNOTICES

capsule comments by starburst
video reviewer barry forshaw
The Horror of Frankenstein (Thorn
EMI) was the lowest point in the
Hammer cycle; Jimmy Sangster's
cod re-write of his marvellous ori-
ginal script labours mercilessly the
black comic elements so well
judged in Fisher's Curse of Frank-
enstein-, Ralph Bates and Dave
Prowse do little to erase memories
of Gushing and Lee.

It’s a minor tragedy that John Boor-
man's long-cherished Arthurian
project Excalibur (Warner Video)
should end up such a plodding
earth-bound affair. Despite splen-
did chunks of Wagner and Garl Orff
on the soundtrack, Boorman's ban-
al script never reaches the heroic
aspects it aspires to, and the acting
ranges from the bizarre (Nicol Wil-
liamson's over-the-top Merlin) to
the inexperienced (Nigel Terry's
Arthur, sadly un-kingly in the latter
half of the film).

It's amazing that after twenty odd
years Hitchcock's Psycho is still
spawning imitations like Unhinged
(Avatar Video) - and it's even more
amazing that so few of them are
anything other than utter trash.
Unhinged is no exception - its only
unusual feature is surely the most
clumsily handled double identity
denouement in the whole cycle.
Gome back. Sir Alfred'

It's very much a matter of the
amount of charity you feel towards
a particular film that determines
your response to it. For instance,
with Hangar 18 (Videoform), you
might groan and say, ‘Good grief,
not another low-budget np-off of
Capricorn One and Close Encoun-
ters (with a liberal dose of Chariots
of the Gods): or you might lean
back in your armchair. Diet Pepsi in
hand, and say 'OK - TV movie
budget, but the director (James L
Conway) has handled it efficiently,
with some pleasing moments - the
investigation of a captured alien
spacecraft, a suspenseful finale.
And Robert Vaughn does again
what he always does so superbly -
the oily, corrupt politico. . .' I
wouldn't dream of trying to predict
which of these would by your re-
sponse.

What strikes one most about The
Scars of Dracula (Thorn EMI) is
Christopher Lee's perfect embodi-
ment of the urbane menace of Dra-
cula; here, at the dog-end of the
Hammer cycle, those moments
when he displays his icy courtesy
as fatal host to the film's cipher-like
characters (including a pie-Minder
Dennis Waterman) are virtually all
the film has to offer. Roy Ward
Baker orchestrates a lively finale,
however.

43

ITm.assii ikh / liw .

OBTSSEY?

Manchester University
Precinct Centre, Oxford Rd.,
Manchester Tel: 061 2736666
Mon-Sat 9.30-5.30
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We ere THE SPECIALISTS mold
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DR WHO

The American Comic

Dr Who No 1 . (In the American Marvel all
colour format) b in slock now. It reprints
material from the British magazine, chiefly
the strips bv Dave Gibbons, tnou^ some
artictes ana photos may be used. The USA
i.5oanditban

naxazim
> Dave Gibbons, tnou^

Sana
pnccbSi.5

Wesent information suggests it will not be

I monthly schedule.

uggest

distributed in England.Tubscription prices
on imported copies, including postage and
packing are as follows:

Sample copy of Dr Who No 1 £1.75

6 monthly subscription £8.95

12 monthly subscription £17.50

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(3ats tha fuk rang* of naw US and British SF
paparbacka. oomca and madia maga.
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MC40

I t's always good to see talented
new writers emerging on publish-
ers' lists, even if that talent is raw. So
I'll give a qualified welcome to Peter
Beere, whose first two novels Urban
Prey and The Crucifixion Squad
(Arrow, £1.75 each) begin a series
under the general title of Trauma 2020.
Beere is undoubtedly an author with
potential, but any praise must be tem-
pered by distinct qualms about the
emphasis in his writing.

The two books follow the adventures
of Beekay Howard in a near-future
London where things are falling apart.
About three-quarters of the population
is unemployed, the government is
brutal and everyone seems to live in
squalor or fear of their lives. Beekay
narrates his own story, and heemerges
as a droll, engaging character, who, in
his efforts to avoid being drafted into
the army, is hunted by a man, seeming-
ly indestructible assassin called Hom-
er. The frightened Beekay lurches from
one crises to the next, being shot at,
imprisoned, tortured and generally
leaving a trail of dead bodies in his
wake.

These books are not for the squeam-
ish. When people get shot or killed -
and they often do -they have a tenden-
cy to spurt their innards all over the
place. The author indulges far too
much in detailed descriptions of erupt-
ing brains and gushing veins with the
result that the better virtues of his story
are going to be wasted on a lot of
readers who will simply throw the
books away in disgust. This is a pity, for
under the crude facade lurks a story
which seeks to affirm human values of
loyalty, trust and love. There's real
ability, too, the author having a natural
style v^ich is loose yet fluent. The laws
of grammar are only loosely adhered
to, but this is in keeping with the fact
that Beekay has not had much formal
education and is telling his story in a
conversational manner.

I was constantly torn between appre-
ciation and dislike for these books. The
grim, seedy atmosphere of Beekay's
decaying London is well conveyed,
and while the female characters play
subordinate roles, they also emerge as
strong individuals. Beere has a nice
line in metaphors, describing a dilapi-
dated building as ‘about as cheerful as
a gassed-out badger set', and both
books are filled with wry observations
and black humour which are at odds
with some of the cheaper and nastier
aspects of the story. But there's a lack
of discipline, as when Beekay uses
words like ‘aphotic’, ‘inspissated’
and ‘acuminates‘ which are scarcely
the vocabulary of an uneducated man.
This is the author's own voice intrud-
ing. Overall, what we have here is
talent being misdirected on subject
matter not worthy of the imagination
behind it Beere is the kind of writer
who would be ruined by too much
delicacy and control, but he needs to
tone down the violence in his work if

l3oo^

he's not to be dismissed as a cynical
hack producing the literary equivalent
of video nasties.

The Neverending Story by Michael

Ende (Penguin, £4.95) is in some re-
spects the complete antithesis of
Beere's books in that it eschews expli-
cit violence and displays the most re-

fined sensibilities. It also lacks vigour.
A young boy, Bastian, is literally trans-
ported into the magical realm of Fan-
tastica where he becomes a hero who
is instrumental in saving the realm
from destruction. First published in
West Germany and already a best-
seller practically everywhere, this book
was originally written as a children's
novel but has appealed to adults every-
where, no doubt because it addresses
child-like longings in all of us. It's a
novel not only about the power of the
imagination but also atx>ut the ne-
cessity of fantasy to the human mind-
Bastian has to believe in the reality of
Fantastica before he can actually cross
into the realm.

The result is an artfully constructed
story by a writer who takes pains with
his prose, and the tale is populated by
all sorts of weird and wonderful char-
acters from rock-eaters to technicolour
lions. But while it's inventive and well-
wrought, it seemed to me to be lacking
in imagination in its truest sense. Bas-
tian and various other characters have
all sorts of strange adventures, but as a
reader I had very little sense of actually
inhabiting their world myself; the story
is reported rather than brought alive
for the reader so that at times it was like
reading a synopsis of the real adven-
ture. Possibly this is a fault of the
translation, but it's more likely that
Michael Ende is the kind who achieves
his effects through diligence rather
than inspiration. The Neyerending
Story is a serious, worthy book, but it's
more artifice than art. Perhaps the
forthcoming film will succeed in con-
veying some of the magic thai^l think is
missing here.

By far the best novel, Lanark, was a
complex, imaginative work, interweav-
ing two stories of a real Glasgow and
its bizarre counterpart, Uthank. This
new novel is less ambitious but more
successful on its own terms. Most of it
takes place inside the head of a drunk-
en insomniac who is passing the night
hours in a Scottish hotel room by
reminiscing on his past and having
masochistic sexual fantasies. This may
sound depressing and depraved, but
it's neither, for the whole story is en-
livened by the vigorous and humane
imagination at the height of his pow-
ers. Lanark was like a bracing whiff of
fresh air through the stale canons of
British literature, and 1982 Janine is a
worthy successor to that book.

A Maze of Death by Philip K. Dick
(Granada, £1.50) is a 1970 novel mak-
ing its first appearance in paperback. It
tells of fourteen people who are sent as
colonists to a new planet and who
quickly realize that something funny is
going on. With Dick you can never take
reality for granted, and the twist ending
suitably surprised me even if it seemed
more appropriate to a short story than
a novel. This is not one of Dick's most
ambitious books, but he's more stimu-
lating than most SF writers even when
not at his very best. ■

45

I was sorting through the questions
I would answer for this month's
column (with a pitch-fork - I get
so many these days!) and I noticed
that many of you have a keen thirst
for fore-knowledge of film projects and
tv company scheduling. I'd like to take
this opportunity to say that Starburst
Data Bank does not deal in Things to
Come. I leave that to the great Tony
Crawley and his news column. Here,
we deal with info on films and tv shows
of the past and present. So, sorry , if you
want to know what Harrison Ford's
next film will be, or whether the BBC
plans to re-screen The Outer Limits,
either check through Things to Come
or - in the case of the tv companies -
write to the people concerned.

And I have a message for all those
readers who want to be film directors/
special effects technicians/makeup
artists. No, I don't know how you can
get into the film industry. If I did know.
I'd be busy becoming a super-star
myself!

But enough wingeing from me. Let's
get on to the meat of this month's
column. . .

THELIFEOFLIONEL

Vaughan Taylor of Bexhill, East Sussex
kicks off with this one. "What can you
tell me about the career of Lionel Atwill
and can you list all the films in which he
appeared?"

Sure can, Vaughan! Atwill was born
in Croydon, England on 1st March,
1885. He attended Mercer's School in
London and had a succession of pri-
vate tutors (his folks were pretty well
fixed, it seems). His dad was an
architect and for a while young Lionel
made something of a living in this
trade. But like so many, he found the
enticements of the theatre too much
and at the tender age of 19 (that's in
1904 for those of you bad at maths) he
leapt into a theatrical career. He did all
right and after a few years in rep he
found himself touring Australia with a
theatre company (1910-1912). Back on
the boards in England, he was lured by
no less than the great Lily Langtry to try
his luck in the good ol' USA in 1915.
Lionel's luck was running and he
proved a hit on Broadway, appearing
alongside the likes of Langtry, Helen
Hayes, Katherine Cornell and the
legendary Nazimova.

His forays into silent films, like so
many "respectable" actors, were cons-
idered something of an alternative to
his stage work, but once movies took a
grip, Atwill was won over. And so to all
the films of Lionel Atwill. . . Eve's
Daughter (1918) For Sale ('18) The
Marriage Price ('19) The Highest Bid-
der ('21 ) Indiscretion ('21 ) Lionel Atwill
in The Actor's Advice to His Son ('28
and a short) The White Faced Fool {'2B)
Silent Witness ('32) Doctor X ('32) The
Vampire Bat ('33) Secret of Madame
Blanche ('33) Mystery of the Wax
Museum ('33) Murders in the Zoo ('33)
The Sphinx ('33) The Song of Songs

Starburst

lnfbrwcstion from filing
cabii^etof DrSctlly Gary

Gtunt but not forgotttn. The Ittn feoturos of Uontl AtwiH is ho oppoorod tn Mystery of the Wix
Museum f1$33l.

('33) Solitaire Man ('33) Secret of the
Blue Room ('33) Beggars in Ermine
('34) Nana ('34) Stamboul Quest ('34)
One More River ('34) Age of Innocence
('34) The Firebird ('34) The Man Who
Reclaimed His Head ('34) Mark of the
Vampire ('35) Devil is a Woman ('35)
Murder Man ('35) Rendezvous ('35)
Captain Blood ('35) Lady of Secrets
('36) Absolute Quiet ('36) Till We Meet
Again ('36) The High Command ('37)
The Road Back ('37) Last Train From
Madrid ('37) Lancer Spy ('37) The
Wrong Road ('37) The Great Garrick
('37) Three Comrades ('38) The Great
Waltz ('38) Son Of Frankenstein ('39)
The Three Musketeers {'3S) The Hound
of the Baskervilles ('39) The Mad
Empress ('39) The Gorilla ('39) The Sun
Never Sets ('39) Mr Moto Takes A
Vacation ('39) Secret of Dr Kildare ('39)
Balalaika ('39) Charlie Chan in Panama
('40) Johnny Apollo ('40) Charlie
Chan's Murder Case ('40) The Girl in
313 ('40) Boom Town ('40) The Great
Profile ('40) Man Made Monster ('41)
Junior G-Men of the Air ('42, serial)
Ghost of Frankenstein ('42) To Be or
Not To Be ('42) Strange Case of Doctor
RX ('421 Pardon My Sarong ('42) Cairo
('42) Night Monster ('42) Sherlock
Holmes and the Secret Weapon ('42)
Mad Doctor of Market Street ('42)
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf man ('43)
Captain America ('44, serial) Lady in
the Death House ('44) Raiders of Ghost
City ('44, serial) Secrets of Scotland
Yard ('44) House of Frankenstein ('45)
Fog Island ('45) Crime, Inc ('45) House
of Dracula ('45) Genius at Work ('46)
and finally. Lost City of the Jungle ('46,
serial).

During the shooting of the last listed,
Atwill succumbed to pneumonia and
died. His scenes were completed by a
double (George Sored who was photo-
graphed from behind. Although Atwill
never reached star status in films he
proved a reliable and well-liked charac-
ter actor. Perhaps his best perform-
ances were in Son of Frankenstein
(playing the one-armed copper, Krogh)
and the series of Bs he made for
Universal during the 40s. Atwill was
married four times, once to the former
wife of General Douglas MacArthur.
His oldest son, John Anthony, was
killed during military service while sta-
tioned in England with the RAF in 1941 .
In 1940 Atwill wasarrested for showing
porno films and reportedly allowing
orgies to be held in his home. He was
let off when the jury investigating the
case found insufficient evidence to
bring him to trial. Although the follow-
ing year he was indicted for perjury in
thecase, saying at the time, "I lied like a
gentleman to protect my friends."
Atwill, despite whatever predilections
he may have had, was nothing if not a
gentleman. He was 61 when he died in
1946. Next!

THEORIGINALEMPEROR

Another blast from the past comes
from Bill Walters of Edinburgh, who

46

wants to know something about the
original Ming the Merciless, Charles
Middleton. Okay Willy Boy, here goes.
Middleton was born on 3rd October,
1879 in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
While still in his teens he joined the
circus, appearing both under the big
top as well as in carnivals and vaudevil-
le. From there he moved into stock
theatre and in the late '20s started
appearing in small parts in the movies.
His first film appears to be The Far-
mer's Daughter in '28. He lent his
talents to such features as Way Out
West (with Laurel and Hardy and the
movie that spawned the belated 70s hit
song. Trail of the Lonesome Pinel An
American Tragedy {'Z^) Pack Up Your
Troubles (again with Stan and Ollie)
and found himself at odds with the
Marx Bros in Duck Soup in 1933. He
appeared in his first serial in 1935, The
Miracle Rider But it was with Flash
Gordon, the following year, that Char-
lie really found his niche playing the
evil Emperor of Mongo, Ming the
Merciless. Middleton proved a real find
for Universal, genuinely becoming the
man you love to hate and capturing the
essence of Alex Raymond's creation.
He reprised the role in Flash Gordon's
Trip to Mars ('381 and the somewhat
lacklustre Flash Gordon Conquers the
Universe ('401. He also appeared in
several other serials, usually in a vil-
lainous role - Dick Tracy Returns ('381
Daredevils of the Red Circle ('391 Perils
of Nyoka ('42) Batman ('43) Black
Arrow ('44) and Jack Armstrong ('47).
He interspersed this chapter-play work
with roles in such diverse features as
Grapes of Wrath. Abe Lincoln in Illinois
las Tom Lincoln) and Charlie Chan's
Murder Cruise (all 1940). His last film
was (appropriately) The Last Bandit,
which he made in the year of his death,
1949.

MAXMUZAK!

Marlon Bush of Kent wants info' on the
composer of the Mad Max films, Brian
May. I've been waiting to trot this out
for some time! So guess what, kiddo -
you win this month's prize. You also
get your question answered.

Brian May was born in Adelaide,
Australia in 1934 and learnt the piano
as a kid. He received further training at
Elder Conservatorium in that fair city.
He served a stint in the army. While
there he got involved with a small
brass band for which he tried his hand
at arranging. His first work was / Want a
Hippopotamus for Christmas (well, we
all gotta start somewhere, I suppose).
After finishing his National Service he
cornered a job with the ABC (the Oz
version of Auntie Beeb) as a musical
arranger. A highlight of this period for
May was that he got to work with violin
virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin. In 1968 he
moved to Melbourne where, he worked
with the ABC Melbourne Dance Band,
which under his hand became the Mel-
bourne Showband. They became pret-
ty popular resulting in the release of

several best-selling records.

But it wasn't until 1975 that May got a
break in the world of movie scoring,
despite some earlier forays with in-
cidental music for ABC children's
shows and a couple of cartoons. Direc-
tor Richard Franklin (who would later
direct Road Games and Psycho 2) had
liked May's orchestral arrangements of
the music from Hair and hired him to
score his first feature. The True Story
of Eskimo Nell. From there. May was
on his way. As well as providing the
music for several TV shows and mini-
series down-under he wrote the scores
for Patrick ('77) a film which had a
rewritten score by Goblin for its Italian
release. Snapshot ('78) Mad Max ('79)
Harlequin ('79) Thirst ('791 Road
Games ('80) The Survivor, Night-
mares, Race to the Yankee Zephyr.
Gallipoli, Mad Max 2, The Killing of
Angel Street (all 19821, Breakfast in
Paris, Turkey Shoot and Kitty and the

Bagman (all 1982). As George Miller
said of May after the completion of
Mad Max, "Brian is a remarkable man.
Not many people in the world could
produce that kind of stuff within the
budget we had, and within that time.
Brian is the kind of man who is going to
make this industry. He is obsessed with
his work. Working in a vacuum, hungry
for information, determined to pro-
duce the best he possibly can." Keep
watching Starburst for an interview
with Brian May.

UNIVERSALLY SCARY

Don Robertson from Ealing wants to
know, "What ever happened to the
book about Universal horror films cal-
led Universal: The Fright Factory? I
also believe that Lon Chaney Jnr wrote
a book about himself and his father.
Any ideas, Sally?"

Nope to either of them, Don. Fright
Factory was announced years ago, but
to the best of my (superior) knowledge
was never actually published. Lon Jnr
apparently started the book on himself
and his dad, but died before he finished
it. There was a book on Chaney Snr
some years ago, published by Barnes/
Tantivy, but it was a somewhat dreary
affair. Good o' Forry Ackerman wrote a
book on Lon last year, which cele-
brated the man and his art. Not sure if it
ever saw publication though. Certainly
Forry never sent me a copy (how about
it, 4SJ?I. You'll find a chapter on both
the Chaneys in Cal Beck's serviceable
Heroes of the Horrors. As far as Univer-
sal goes, there is the recent The Univer-
sal Story by Clive Hirschhorn (Octo-
pus), but that covers ALL the Universal
films, not just the horrors and SF
movies. But never fear, Phil Edwards is
here lor there, somewhere!) and is
busily preparing the first in an ongoing
series for Starburst called The All-
Studio Guide to Fantasy Films. The
first part is Universal Fantasy in which
he'll be tracing and tracking down
production details and critical com-
ments for nearly 300 movies produced
by the studio from the year dot to the
present day. So Don-baby, all you gotta
do IS keep buying Starburst!

VAMPIRES IN SPACE!

Barbara Taylor (nice to have one of the
ladies write in for a change!) from
Lancs wants details of Mario Bava's
Planet of the Vampires.

Okay, Babs, you got 'em. Magnifi-
cent Mario directed the film in 1 965 and
it was an American/Italian/Spanish and
German co-production for American
International/ltalian International/Cas-
tilla/Omnia (phew!). It was basically
about a group of space travellers who
find themselves stranded on an alien
planet invested with ghostly critters
hungry for blood and also their bodies.
The flick starred Barry Sullivan, Norma
Bengell, Angel Aranda, Evi Marandi
and Franco Andrei. Like most of Bava's
output, style counted for much more
than content and while the film is
genuinely creepy at times it borders on
the daft, despite the collaboration by lb
Melchior (among others) with Bava on
the script. Planet of the Vampires
(whose alternate titles are Terrore Nel-
lo Spazio in Italy, Terror en el Espacio
in Spain, Planet of Terror, Planet of
Blood, The Demon Planet for U.S. telly.
Haunted Planet Haunted World, Out-
lawed Planet and Planet of the
Damned) is undoubtedly one of the
films from which Dan O'Bannon took
his inspiration, in particular the discov-
ery of a fossilised alien, for Alien. It's a
pity that the film doesn't turn up more
frequently than it does. It's effective
and often scary, and the costumes for
the astronauts are tight-fitting black
leather - yours truly's favourite attire!
See you all next month, and keep the
questions flying in. I'll answer them as
quickly as possible. TTFN. ■

47

coming
attractions
from Britain's
premiere fantasy
magazine!

mm

samm

A video gaming champ is the only hope
of an alien civilisation. . . full colour
coverage in Starburst 74.

vmm

Starburst is offering 10 copies each on
video cassette of John Badham 's block-
buster WarCamesand the latest Dirty
Harry epic Sudden Impact

mmm

iKPomnir

Over four years in the making. . . the
fantasy film we thought we'd never see
is finally upon us. Don't missour
exclusive report.

Starburst presents an exclusive
interview with actress Laurene Landon,
star of the new sword and sorcery

movie